24 Hours of DINO

Funny how the Midwest seems to always get overlooked when people talk about the "best" mountain biking. Missouri has some awesome trails. Indiana will blow your mind with what they've done in the last few years. We rode some of the trails at Versailles State Park in the south east corner of the state. Even at 5 1/2 hours the drive would be worth making for a weekend getaway, all hwy. Brown County is another one I will be checking out in the next few months. The trails are narrow, fast and flowy.

This weekend Greg Ott, Todd Holtmann, Karen Holtmann and I went to race the 24 Hours of DINO-(Do INdiana Offroad). We left Friday morning hoping to get there, set up and pre-ride the course. We ran short on time and lap 1 of the race was our first look. It was the first race of its kind for them. This was my 4th 24 hour all in different states; Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana. Indiana was the best course, by far.

The race started with a typical short run to the bikes. What was not so typical was the required removal of a critical bike part to be carried with you as you "ran" to your bike. Front wheel seemed the most simple to re-install and nearly all agreed with the exception of a few Cannondale "Lefty" owners that opted to pull their seatpost in lieu of their bolt-on-and-then-retighten-your-disc-brake front wheels. This time I truly didn't run at all, just walked and didn't "run" into any bottle necks on the trail. The other thing that worked well for me was riding as slow as I could on the first lap, my avg heart rate was 142, really low for me. Not going anaerobic kept me from ever having the slightest hint of cramps and after the horrible cramps I had at Binder Lake, that was a welcome change.

Now that I had the pace set and had a plan for nutrition, all I had to do was ride and so I did. The laps were clicking off one after another with little pit time. The key to this trail was only giving gas when you needed it. I figured out how fast I needed to go so I wouldn't have to brake through the corners and carry as much speed as possible. You wouldn't believe how efficient this can make you. It is possible to go faster, but with a ton more energy expended. Let it all hang out on the faster sections and chill on the climbs. Even with this strategy a small chainring was never needed. The climbs are well designed in that they follow the contours, instead of short and steep they were long and gradual. Here is a video of the "Cliffside Trail". We rode up this trail. In the video, which doesn't do it justice, they are riding down it. I wouldn't call it a cliff, but it sure made you pucker up and I saw quite a few folks walking sections of it. Much of this trail reminded me of Roller Coaster at Castlewood, some of it Colorado. The bench cutting much like Love at Castlewood.

Mechanically, the only issue I had all day with the bike was a pin-hole leak in my front tire. I thought for sure the sealant would take care of it and hit it with some CO2. Lasted about 2 minutes. I pulled the wheel off the bike, found the hole and let the sealant pool. It sealed up and I aired it back up, manually. It held for the rest of the lap and as soon as I got back I hit it with the floor pump to my normal pressure. Todd had warmed up some soup so I took a dinner break. Tire seemed fine when I got ready to go back out. I was amazed at how much light my new Cygo Trion light put out. It's a 600 lumen led with a self contained battery, no cords. I rode it on the lowest and the medium low settings with no issues. Lasted all night with one quick recharge at dinner and a full recharge when I took my long break.

After 12 laps I had nearly an hour on second place but was getting really sleepy. To me it wasn't worth making a big mistake and getting hurt so I took that break. If I had stuck to my plan of a one hour break I would have been right with 2nd and easily ridden ahead, but I hit "snooze" and it turned into two hours. I was able to make up 25 minutes on him but once it started raining I called it, again not worth it. My bike was clean, I was still clean and dry. The winner came in about 30 minutes after I finished 15 on his 16th lap and went back out. It took him forever to finish that lap and he was covered in mud from crashing, blood visibly pouring out from his knee. He wanted it. He and I both got plaques, his said 1st, mine 2nd-that's all. He had a pit crew of 4 that fed him on the bike, gave him lights at dark, took them back when it got light, we did EVERYTHING on our own. So his times are essentially ride time with only a few minutes of stopped time. I was consistently riding between 1:02 and 1:10 laps but pitting between every lap. My 15th lap was 1:04 ride time, his 1:27. His crew was also keeping him updated on the other soloists. I was told after my 14th lap that I was 20 minutes behind Tim Mack, he didn't go out on 15 so I was told I had won. They forgot to tell me Martin Sanders was ahead of me also. At that point I couldn't have caught him anyway.



Todd crashed hard and called it after 7 laps, still 91 miles! Greg rode a great race finishing 4th with 13 laps and Karen finished 2nd to a seasoned endurance racer and did it all on her single speed. 585 miles ridden between the four of us, pretty flippin cool! Best part is that I feel totally fine a day later. It was 4 days before I felt okay after Binder Lake. It would be nice to race an entire race and not have rain play a part. A little hard to decipher, but here are the DINO lap splits. Find a rider, laps are in the right column, total time in the left.

The course was 13 miles, but the Garmin only picked up between 11 and 12. I attribute this to how tight and twisty the trail was. To keep the file sizes smaller the Garmin only makes periodic updates and on an open trail or the road it is very accurate. Not sure why I didn't get elevation until lap 5 but oh well. Around 800ft per lap X 15 = 12000ft. Lap one includes the run and a lap around the pool area. I started my lap at the start line each lap. So my breaks show up at the end of the laps, conversely, they show up at the beginning of the laps on the DINO splits. Next time I think I'll start it at the beginning of the lap, hit lap at the end of the lap and hit lap again at the beginning. That way I'll have accurate lap and break times regardless of whether or not my bike is moving.