12 Hours of Cranky Monkey

Quantico, VA
Saturday June 26, 2010
by: Joseph Castle

This report comes late because I didn’t want to write about this race, much less think about it after I walked away on Saturday the 26th.  The first time I did this race, three years ago.  I was on a team and came in fourth place.  I was really surprised by doing so well, being next to the podium, and receiving a beer mug.  The long story short was that my race partner was really good and kept us in the race when I was just learning how to race and hanging in the race the best I could.  At the end of that year, I set a personal challenge to finish this race at some point in the future within the top five so that I could earn another beer mug on my own.

Last year, I entered this race as a solo racer.  I did okay for the first couple laps but became sick mid way through the race.  It ended up that I ate a Cliff bar before the race and it didn’t agree with my stomach.  No race beer mug or top five finish but I did manage to complete five laps for 50 miles and 5k feet of climbing.

This year was the year I was going to achieve my goal of finishing top five and get my beer mug.  I thought that coming from the TSE to this race was going to put me in good shape to do really well.  It did but not good enough to get what I wanted.  I figured that I would never do this race again once I got my beer much but now have to go back next year.  This is a tough race with temperatures usually in the mid 90s and 1000 feet of climbing per 10 mile lap.

The field was stacked this year even though the total number of participants was down.  I saw racers from national brand teams like Trek and Cannondale.  I also saw a lot of bike shop racers from up and down the East coast.  I was really surprised to see the caliber of talent especially at a small local race.  I knew I was in trouble when the heat kicked in and I was being passed a lot by these top level people.  I managed to complete seven laps for 70 miles and 7000 feet of climbing which would have put me in a top five position last year but I needed eight laps this year.  The overall winners did 11 laps and were still going as I was talking to one guy nearing the finish.

This means that next year, I will have to do this race again.  I will hopefully be coming off another successful TSE finish and in good shape.  I will try to entice someone to be my pit manager to hand me stuff as I come through so I don’t have to waste time on filling water bottles and grabbing food.

It was still a fun experience and another one to learn from.  I am in a tough fight for one little beer mug.  Ha!