Recap of 25 hours of frog hollow

Just got back from 25 Hours of Frog Hollow in St. George, Utah and couldn't help but have a great time! They call it the longest 1 day race b/c it always occurs over the time change weekend so, you guessed it, the normal 24 hour mtn bike race becomes 25...The riding season in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, etc... is pretty much coming to a close(unless you're a crazy snowbiker), so this is always a fun event to close out your season. The priority for the weekend was fun, so myself and a few riding buddies from ID/UT formed a team and headed to the desert. We road under the same team/sponsorship as last year, Team Kuhl, where we won the 4 man division, so even though our primary goal was to have a good time, competitive juices were hard to stop.

We arrived Thursday and promptly setup camp and preroad the course. Conditions were perfect with tacky dirt, sun and highs in the 60s. We did much of the same Friday, then the race started Saturday morning at 10AM. Most, if not all, 24 hour races start "le mans" style, so our first rider took a light jog and then started off with a solid first lap. I road second and was doing well, feeling pretty good until I got a little too saucy on a rocky decent and pinch flatted my rear wheel about 9 miles into the 13 mile lap. After a couple of failed attempts at fixing the flat(I damaged the bead), I decided to take the next 30 minutes to ride, use a CO2, jog, use a CO2, ride and repeat. Needless to say my first lap took a little longer than expected and our race got off to a rough start. I think we were ?8th after the 2nd lap. We didn't give up though and gave it our all into the evening. We slowly chipped away at the competition through the night, fighting some wind and some temps down to 40. By the morning we were duking it out for the top 3. The name of the game was consistency for us and by the 24th hour of the race we were sitting 2nd and sent out a rider only 2 minutes up on third. He was able to dig deep and maintain our lead coming into the final minutes of the race. We were super stoked to end the race on a high note, placing 2nd in the 4 man open.

A couple of us will race some cyclocross through December and start to think about skiing soon; maybe getting back on the trainers by the New Year. Looking forward to hashing out some 2019 plans soon, incorporating power into training and seeing some of you out on the course!