24 Hours of Moab

Jen, Jed and I went down to Moab this past weekend to help out with the 24 Hours of Moab mountain biking race. Jen rode in this race last year with her team (whom we were supporting this year) but decided it was too crazy of a race... to be riding in the wee hours of the night and have your headlamp and back up flash light all run out of batteries. Jen and Jed took pictures and I helped out as a Registrar for the event. It was crazy!

We arrived Friday night and set up camp with the team and then headed into dinner - which was organized and put on by a couple of wives of the team members - they fed 50 people... every meal of the weekend plus some hot soup for the riders that had to ride in the middle of the night. The race truly is a 24 hour race... as in you have a team (or not) and take turns riding ... you want to get as many laps as possible in the 24 hours so you can win the prize.

Anyway, there were some terrible winds. I swear it was a literal sandstorm down there... the wind blew all Friday night and it blew sand up and under the fly of our tent so I would wake up to sand pelting my face. I did my work for 8 hours on Saturday in the main tent... and unfortunately for me, the wind blew the sand in the two sides of the tent that were open, but since the other two sides were blocked off... it just stayed in the tent... check out my VERY dirty face in the pic below. I was dirtier than the riders!! You can see how the riders all picked up the dust for us in the tent... see the pic with them all running? They started the race with a run in order to break up the riders so they weren't all starting at the same time... they don't use waves or heats for this race.

But I did get to rinse off in a "shower" that the event provided. And Saturday night was much more pleasant because the 35 mph winds finally disappeared. Then we came back early on Sunday so I could make it to my church meeting by 4:00.

You know what is kind of crazy about this event? It's not actually held in Moab... it is held out in the boonies off a dirt road so we basically stayed in a city of cars, tents, camp-trailers, and a stage ... there were several thousand people there.