For a breakdown of the race itself, read this post.

Before I dive into this event and the details that I can remember, first a massive THANK YOU to the promoters of the MOAT Mountain 24 Hours of Great Glen, (#24HOGG), the volunteers, and every single person who had a kind word to say. I’m leaving out some special moments and people, but it’s already too long and I can’t remember everything right now. Every single person made the difference out there throughout the weekend! It was the best of cycling community and positive vibes from the very beginning until we rolled out of the field we’d called home for the weekend.

24-hour mountain bike races are few and far between and are some of the most special events out there. They aren’t well known so if you’re hearing about it for the first time here, you’re in the vast majority. 24-hour races involve a full weekend of being a tight-knit community living together in a pop-up tent city next to the course. Families and friends of racers come join in the weekend festivities to support and be part of the party, and there is a huge crew of volunteers and staff who make this whole little city run smoothly for the whole weekend. People start arriving the minute organizers say that the camping areas are open so as to stake out their space, pitch tents, and assemble complicated outdoor kitchens for their team.

The Set Up

Starting at 12pm noon on Saturday, racers battle the course, the conditions, the heat of the day, the dark of night, the wet of the rain, and all of the challenges together. Everyone shares the same course no matter one’s race category, men and women, junior racers to seasoned racing veterans. I love being part of a mixed field of people. Racing is not the reason I’m there, yet this aspect played into my overall good feelings of the weekend which I’ll get into later. The top organized race events of my life have all been an everyone-races-together scenario. Great examples: Unbound and Fat Pursuit. Every group ride I ever do falls into this category too, but right now, I’m talking about racing.

There are a lot of rules and interesting things that surround what a 24-hour race is and how it’s run. I’ll highlight some in this race report. Most racers participate on a team of 2 people, 4 or 5 people. In this race, 72 out of the 456 entrants were 24-hour solo racers. There are 12-hour categories as well. Some multi-person categories are women-only categories, some delineated by age, others are mixed so men and women can be on the same team. For the teams, one team member races at a time, then at the end of the lap, that person taps out to the next team member who races the next lap of the course. The promoters keep track of all of the data surrounding each lap for each person and team. It’s an impressive task to keep track of everyone’s timing, what lap each racer is on, who is on which team, all of that good stuff.

It’s certainly fun to see the stats afterward: how many laps were done at night, what the fastest lap was, who had the most overtakes, the statistics are endless.

I went with a group of people who are part of the New England Expedition Riders AKA NEER. My original intent was to be on a team of 4 others for the shared experience. To make a very long story short, we ended up with 5 people wanting to be on the team, so I kicked myself off, electing for the solo 24-hour category. This is something I had never, ever considered doing. But once I did it, I couldn’t not get excited about the prospect of racing for 24 hours. Besides, I need to be training for Fat Pursuit, and this is ideal.

20 years ago, I attended the 24 Hours at Moab Mountain bike race only as a volunteer. It’s one of the first things I ever did as a new cyclist, and it introduced me to good friends who I then got into road cycling with. When I was in Moab, I saw pro-level men crack in the middle of the night and quit. My impression was that 24 hours of mountain bike racing is impossible. Fortunately, there’s no rule that you can’t stop at any time, you still get to be in the results. Some 24-hour races have different rules about being on the course near the end, Great Glen didn’t have anything like that.

It’s taken me 20 years to do my first 24-hour race, and this is my second mountain bike race ever. Never too late to start. I highly recommend volunteering for one of these races because the camaraderie and community vibe is so great, much of the fun simply has to do with being part of the whole thing.

Winning the Race: My Top-Secret Strategy

Work has been out-of-control bonkers, so I didn’t have a plan hashed out and hadn’t thought much about the race itself. I was more worried over the logistics surrounding the organization of the 4-person team.

I won my age group (women 41 and over) and was 2nd overall woman. I logged 16 laps. To add credibility to this result (there aren’t a lot of women participants but those who were there took it seriously), the 6th place man under 41yrs old logged 16 laps as did the 4th place man 41+ years old. In case it’s not obvious from my other race reports (where I’ve come in mid-pack or further back), doing well here had absolutely nothing to do with the experience and my happiness at having done it. But it’s a fun story to tell!

My strategy: go steady and just keep moving. My transitions (time in between laps) could have been faster, but they were a lot faster than I thought they would be. Originally, I thought there would be time to get back to the team campsite, make a sandwich, fill a water bottle, change into a clean/dry jersey and bibs, mosey back to course every other lap. My husband, Rob, was there and he was a saint to meet me at the race tent after every single lap to give me a full water bottle of High Carb Skratch mix (400 calories per bottle), a 1/2 bottle of plain water, and whatever else I might need. He may have slept for 40 minutes total all night. That’s much harder than racing.

NEER’s home base was comfortable with lots of tents, tables, trees, and lights around a pop-up for nighttime hanging out. Our big, red van was hiding behind its large awning. We wanted to be ready for both the sun and rain, and we really hoped predicted thunderstorms wouldn’t materialize (they didn’t).

I knew I didn’t want to sleep, that was something I wanted to avoid if at all possible. I think I may have shut my eyes for 5-10 minutes during one transition break while sitting up in a chair, but I don’t know if I actually fell asleep during the full almost 25 hours of the race. Yeah, I made a long race longer. Keep reading.

The idea of going back to camp even once flew out the window the moment the gun went off and I realized that this is a race, and the competitive part of my brain turned on and I had to at least try to race and give it my best.

I’m not a technical mountain biker, and I knew other people would beat me in the techy parts of the course. My level of mountain bike riding confidence went up from the pre-ride to the end of the race but I’m still not going to race on boardwalks or wet rocks. I know I have the ability to ride for hours and climb reasonably well so I made sure to take advantage of the carriage road portions, get off of the brakes on descents, and move as quickly through the parts that were above my ability level either by riding slowly or getting off of the bike and walking over/around whatever it was.

Seeing other people out there walking their bikes in places was comforting. No one is doing this thing perfectly, everyone is having their difficulties, and no one seemed to be judging anyone else. All I saw all day and night were kind people being nice to each other and fast guys saying “thank you” when I’d move out of their way so they could keep moving. The fast guys were really fast, it was fun to see them fly. There were fast women and some very strong junior girls out there passing me, too, riding with tremendous confidence.

I watch pro mountain bike racing all of the time on TV. They show the top few riders the whole time, the difficulties people have, even at the top of the sport, rarely get shown on TV. Those courses are so much more gnarly than this course. I think others would agree this ~9.1-mile course was really well designed with a perfect mix of elements and fun spots, whoop-dee-doos, let-er-rip descents. The climbs were hard, the course required nearly constant attention and both hands on the handlebars, thus not many opportunities to take a drink. It was also very beautiful. I have no pictures from the course. This is one time I put my phone away and didn’t look at it for over 24 hours. It was like being on another planet.

Gaining a New Identity: Number 9

With my big yellow number, everyone knew I was a solo rider. The whole race I heard “great job solo rider!” And that was so nice to have this constant encouragement and positive vibe from all of these other racers and spectators out there. Most of the other racers were faster than me and they were being so darn nice. I exchanged stories and a few broken sentences with a number of people.

Best story: I met a woman who was doing the race with her husband as a 2-person team. They were trading laps and caring for their 1-year-old! LOVE these stories! I hope that worked out for both of them and their kiddo.

There’s so much camaraderie out there across all riders, and there’s even more shared by solo riders. The amount of camaraderie seemed to increase as the race went on as well. At the beginning, I didn’t trust I could do it or that I would want to go past 2 laps. A compliment from someone early on wasn’t anything I felt I deserved because anyone can register for a big ride. I’d just laugh and say, “Let’s just see where I’m at tomorrow morning.” After getting through enough laps, at some point, I could accept that I’d taken on a challenge that wasn’t too big or scary.

One of the volunteers told me really nice things when I passed through the tent in the middle of the night: “You’re having a great race, Number 9.” The way he delivered his messages, he made me feel like I was doing something special. I wish I could have said “thank you” to him at the end of the race. Words matter and in the middle of the night, there aren’t many of them. All of the volunteers were nice, and many were part-time cheerleaders too. Number 9 was my name throughout the race, and I loved it.

What I learned & what I hope you take from this

• 24-hour races are for EVERYONE. Racers, people who ride mountain bikes but don’t consider themselves “racers,” non-riders, young and old. Sign up for the races, they’re not expensive when you consider it’s a full weekend of camping (10am Friday until 10am Monday), well organized, there’s a t-shirt… it costs promoters a LOT to run something like this on this scale. Keep them in business! Volunteer if you’re not a racer. Take your kids to the kids’ race and kids activities.
• I felt I had an advantage with my age (46 at the time of the race, 47 at the time of this writing) and experience of being a cyclist despite my major lack of mountain bike-specific experience. I knew how to keep my heart rate low. I don’t know that younger people can tolerate the lack of sleep as well. The point is to race your strengths, give yourself grace on your weaknesses, and just keep moving forward. Everyone is having some trouble out there, you’re never alone.
• Fuel the ride and go in with a plan and back-up plan with your team/support people & communicate. Practice eating on long rides and make sure to keep the calories coming in however you can tolerate them. I should have had ice cream and pickles at the ready since these foods work well for me when I’m deep into a ride. Next time.
• Having a bucket of ice to just put on my skin or wash off with would have felt great. If it’s feasible, that’s a treat in between laps.
• Get to the venue as soon as they say it’s open. Getting in late doesn’t give you enough time to prep everything and get decent sleep prior to the race start. 12pm is EARLY, it is not as late as it sounds given the amount of pre-race prep is necessary.
• Pre-ride the course before the race so you know what to expect and have a chance to practice anything you’re not certain of prior to needing to race it.
• Twist your friends’ arms, it’s a good time to spend together. Like the promoters of this race said: Tell your employer you’ll be sick Monday after the race. Truth. It was nearly impossible to think enough to get any work done today. Take time to recover, replenish, and reflect on the event. A whole heck of a lot happens in those 24 hours as well as the many days before it starts.

Savor the experience, grow from it, realize just how much more you’re capable of than you ever thought possible, and make plans to return the following year!