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Quote from bikerteam on Mar 23rd, 2009, 2:13pm:Kent - welcome to the DFW area rbent forum. As you'll see, we're an active group. Do you have a similar forum in your area?
Contratulations on an awesome race result! I was one of John's crew members along with Steve and Peggy Petty. We didn't officially meet, though I wish we did.
I'm curious about your crew's strategy during the leap frog portion of the race. Even after 100-200k, and John being approx. 45 minutes in the lead, your crew would jump ahead of us. Since official racer positional updates were limited to time stations, we assumed your crew was on a "check on the competition" mode. Did you carry tubes, air, etc., in case of a mechanical?
Let us know if you make it up here for any of the Lone Star Randonneur events. We'd love to ride with you. Also, consider coming up for The Texas Time Trials (
http://www.tt24tt.com/)
No real local forum.
Thanks. Yeah, I wanted to meet his crew but didn't see any of you Sun evening at Floores.
I think the only time my crew was that far ahead was maybe at the very beginning. We were running Midland water-resistant radios so I was in contact with them the entire race which would put them likely at most 5 miles ahead of me. They weren't checking on competition, just going to the next arranged stop. Often they would just pass me to stop but the radios made it a little unnecessary to stay terribly close. I ran the entire race on one set of AA batteries in my radio - surprised me they would last that long transmitting on high with fairly constant chatter. I carried tube change equipment until Camp Wood iirc. The crew followed me after that as per the rules. This was the first race for me and my crew so we were pretty clueless but they did a fabulous job. The radios made a huge difference as I could tell them precisely what I needed and how to give it to me. Later in the race handoffs out the window just happened. No issues, no problems. I thought they'd be a lot harder, but excellent drivers, etc. probably made the difference. Flying down Old No9 from the bat cave was interesting in the dark with it raining. I called for my driver to get a close as possible for lighting. I was running a 700 lumen headlight and a led helmet light but under the conditions it wasn't enough. Kudos to all the drivers who had to deal with that situation as they had to follow really closely under very difficult conditions.
As I related at the Bacchetta site, I trashed my legs with a sugar overdose. I didn't realize until after the race, reading emails, etc. that I never really related how much pain I was in to my crew. Probably a good thing though, as they would likely have pulled me out if they knew. I blew out blood vessels throughout my lower legs and trashed tendons, etc. I put a tennis elbow wrap on my right ankle around Leakey which pretty much saved it but didn't have another so my left ankle was pretty much blown out by the end of the race. I still have a wrap on it and it's still very swollen a week later. My right ankle is doing better and should be back to normal maybe later this week. I talked with a doctor who I'm fitting a new Giro20 to (from Helotes Bicycle - new Bacchetta dealer) about the problems and he said yes, what likely happened is that sugar overdose pushed water back into my stomach preventing it and the needed electrolytes from getting digested so the effect was the same as if I wasn't drinking enough water/electrolytes - severe cramping. I still think I would have finished in the 22-23 hours I had anticipated if I hadn't screwed up the diet. I issued a challenge to my crew and some of my riding buddies for a local rematch when I recover. I do it solo again and they can do it as a relay team. :^) If any of you dfw/rbent riders want to join in, you'd be welcome.
I'm just a bike rider so it's a little hard to get up that far. I rode to Salado last summer and almost rode to Waco to visit my daughter in Feb. We'll be at the ESR Bent event next month if any of you make it down then. If we ride to Long Island in May we'll likely go through NE TX if any would be interested in trying to meet up.