Scenic Views, Lots of climbing, lots of fire roads....and lots of climbing.
Well, consitent with the 24 hours of Cool, Jimmy put on a really nice event with a very cool vibe.
After the typical pre-hunred miler rituals (Coffee, cereal, race to the bathroom, etc) I rolled to the start to see a lot of familar faces from the East Coast Hundred milers. Harlan and TomiMcmillar from PA, Tinker, and those famous guys from Trek.
The First 4o Miles were pretty fun. Nice Fire Road climbs in the shade followed by some really fun and fast fire road descents. It was very challenging as it was really dusty, making it very hard to see.
I caught up with Tomi for a quick photo op at nice scenic spot- this would be the last time I would see him as he was turning the cranks very well.
So it was pretty much a lot of fire roads. I caught up with tinker somwhere around mile 40 or so - He was planning to bail and told me to get him some help.
Around mile 50 I found a guy on the road unconscious. This was pretty scary. This guy caught me on the climb and we were racing pretty fast on the technical decents, really hauling ass. He got away from me on the next climb, then I started descending, doing about 30 MPH on the fire road. I came around the corner and saw the dude laying in the road. Eyes open, face banged up, but nobody home. Fortunately he was breathing. A few others gathered arouund and he began to come to. He was still out of it, he didnt remeber his name and mumbled something about a Mercedes. We were far from any check point, so I started to get worried, but luckily the search and rescue motos happened to be headed our way. By the time the motos got to us the guy was already standing, so we handed him off and got back to the race......at a munch slower pace thinking about what we just saw.
We all knew mile 69 was going to be bad from the elevation profile...and it was. I actually had to do a bit of walking near the top of the climb
Anyway, i rolled in around 10:20 something, the Garmin had 11,000 feet of elevation gain. Time to jump in the lake. Drink beer and eat hot dogs.