Western’s Mountain Sports Bike Team traveled to Tucson, Arizona this weekend to compete in the 24 Hours of Old Pueblo Mountain Bike Race. The team consisted of 5 racers: Zoe Smith, Angela Vitulli, Jimi Averill, Kirsten Paulson, and Tim O’Neal.
They left early Thursday morning and made the 13-hour drive to Tucson in one push. With the drive out of the way, the team started to focus on the coming race. After Fridays pre-ride of the trail, they found and fixed a couple of early-season mechanical issues.
On Saturday morning, the temperatures rose into the 80’s as the team prepared for the noon start of the race. The event began with a Lemans start with racers running a quarter of a mile to their bikes. Jimi crushed the start, being one of the first racers to his bike. The clock started on the 24 hours and the team set up a routine that would last through the long night.
During the first afternoon, Western’s times were fast and consistent with about 1 hour and 20 minute lap times. On the first lap of the night, Tim had the fastest lap of the race at 1:12.12. The times during the night laps slowed to around 1 hour 30 minutes for most team members. In the dark the trails became 100 times more dangerous due to the fact that racers could not see what was ahead of them. With only one problem during the night, the team moved into 6th place. Finally, with sunrise upon them, the team could see the home stretch and pushed themselves to the limit. Three of the racers completed 3 laps, while two completed 4 laps of the 16-mile course. With exhaustion setting in, the team was nipping at the heels of the 5th place team. Coming in just 5 minutes behind in the end, Western came in 6th in their division and 176th out of 533 overall. After the long 24 hours of racing the team headed for home with tan faces and in desperate need for a shower. See Full Results.
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