2009 Mas O Menos 100K - Terlingua, Texas

It's over. Possibly the hardest thing I have ever done.

It all started at 6AM attempting to stuff as many carbs as I can into my system.

after a controlled start we went in a huge dusty pack in to the desert. I was keeping my pace yet more or less keeping Brain's Sugar Cycles jersey at distance. The first 20ish miles of the race where really nice, really good feedings some droppes, fast ones.

Sometime during the end of the 20ish there was this ledge that we started climbing on I remember as this part of the race starting to be hard. people started dropping fast during this part of the race, I was just keeping my pace, keeping up with Brain's blue visible jersey. The first 20ish miles that went fairly easy started turning into hell when I was the hill that everyone was talking about. The climb was supposedly 3 miles long rocky and a 1000 feet of altitude gain. When I started doing the hill I took my eyes of our team mate and started concentrating on the ride up. I never needed to walk any of it, therefore when I reached near the top I gassed down and kept going faster. Sadly what I thought to be the 3 mile hill was only a tease, I discovered the hard way that I wasn't half or not even quarter way done. I saw a huge chain of cyclist going up this fat mountain in the middle of the desert and it didn't look like it's going to be easy. I put my eyes down and kept on pedaling the whole way up. I needed to get off 2 times because people didn't give me space, but after all the sweat and tears I got to the top not before running over a cactus. I started feeling the pressure dropping in my front wheel .I knew that I have to get the the bottom because I didn't have CO2 to fill it back up. What needed to be like a fast drop all the way down to the start ended up being really slow down hill ride. All the time that I have gained went down the drain simply because my tire didn't have enough air in it. When I got the the start finish line to start my other 30 mile lap Ericka handed me my other pack and I started filling up my tire with air. My wheel didn't want to seal for about 15 min and finely when I was ready to go, guess what? my back tire started gashing out air, that was another 15 min of work because the hole was really big.

After loosing a little over half an hour I went on my second lap. The trail was clear and Brain was no where to be seen. I paced my self beucause at this point getting a good rank would not be possible. Slowly again I started charging people at the second lap. I was eating and drinking right but then I started feeling my legs, I knew that there is no way back and now my legs are going to cramp at me really bad by the end of the ride. After getting to the air port the cramping was really bad, you could see my muscles in my body starting to move inside my legs, it looked like I had some creature walking somewhere in there, it was really unpleasant feeling. I knew that the hill is coming back and this second time around it's not going to be easy at all. I started going up this hill the second time around. No one was around only few of the brave ones the 40-50 class I would assume that didn't drop and went for the 100K glory. I was in really big pain, I don't think that I can describe in words how painful it was and even worse I ran out of water in the middle of the hill, what made the cramping really painful, even walking slow was a task from hell.

The feeling of getting to the top of the hill was great.I knew that from now on the way down is one big downhill and it's for almost 6 fast miles. I set back and let gravity do it's work, because I really could not pedal. I looked at the hill as a present I hardly had to move and for some reason I knew that if I will need to be moving that was be it for me. Getting to the finish and seeing Luan and Ericka was amazing. the water the food everything was great and even the pain started to feel like a good one. I can't describe the feeling of finishing such a race, but I think that everyone should give it a try. After 6 hours and 15 min I was done.

Now, where are the freaking scores?