ray's blog

I’m out on my first lap, second in the team rotation...  The treacherous rock outcrops and escarpments I feared so much from last year were behind me and didn’t seem as bad as I remembered (at least, with fresh legs and plenty of sleep; that would change). Now I am in the heart of the sweetly twisting singletrack—buff, beautiful and at times reminiscent of a slalom run. Carving sinuous s-turns betwixt trees in the dappled afternoon light is an unexpectedly beautiful experience amidst the brutality of a 24-hour event. If you weren’t there, you were missing out.

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“You’re doing what?”

“Are you crazy?”

Or, that dark voice that comes to you as you shake uncontrollably in the wee hours of the darkness: why am I doing this?

In this modern-convenience, creature-comfort, drink-cozy (‘Ooooh! That beer’s too cold to hold!”) age, doing a 24-hour race seems, well, if not outright ‘crazy’ then definitely on the wrong side of ‘well-adjusted.’

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In just a few hours, hearty souls (and more than a few crazed lunatics) will take the field for the start of the second annual 24 Hours of Landahl. This will be my fourth ‘round-the-clock event in the last 7 years and I’m still looking forward to it. I cut my teeth in the muddy trenches of Snowshoe in ’01 (and subsequently swore off racing, biking and anything to do with water and/or dirt) only to head to Moab the following year to do the duo pro category. Five years later and I’m still finding sand.

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