Picked up Team Muleterro member E-Mule and we headed for Butte on Friday PM for the registration at the Outdoorsman, a bike shop which I think happens to be owned by top American road racer Levi Leipheimer’s older brother Rob. Got registered, got our resupply stuff put in the aid station bins, and heard the organizers spouting off about how the course was marked “so much better than last year!” Hmmm. This would prove to be an interesting statement later on....
We staked out a campsite up on Homestake Pass about a half mile from the race start. Some other friends showed up and we made a big fire, cooked a bunch of food and had some beers and stories around the fire. I made the mistake of trying to “carbo-load” and ate about 2 pounds of pasta with sausage and a burrito. I was also trying to “hydrate” and drank at least forty two water bottles before going to bed. This overindulgence produced all sorts of problems for me that night. I had to get up at least 5 times to go to the bathroom in the woods and had to pee every 15 minutes it seemed. It was terrible. My stomach was totally freaking out and I barely slept. Of course this is after I proclaimed haughtily at the campfire how “I NEVER get stomach issues like all these delicate XC racer types....” HA! So it was up early on no sleep and still having digestive problems all morning.
E-Mule was doing the Butte 100 and was decidedly more prepared than I was. He had done a lot of 24 hour races this year and trained specifically since like January for this type of event. His bike was a full rigid Niner Air 9 set up 1x9 running tubeless tires. I took it off my bike rack when we go to camp and was astonished at how light it was. I think it weighed as a complete bike as much as my wheels alone did on my bike. Uh oh.
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