Race Report - 24 Hrs. Lake Tahoe

Race Report by Todd Lindemann

This is the first race report I have posted / put in writing - ever! I did this race with 3 friends from Incline (Tahoe) and 3 out of 4 of us raced in the 2001 24-hours of Tahoe together and finished 9th. This year we were hoping for a little better and we were successful. We raced Men's Sport with 41 teams.

Pre-race: I took a practice lap on Friday about 2 hours after it dumped. Wet, muddy, slick conditions (fun!!), except I went OTB toward the end. P'd me off - technical section, but I have never had problems on that area before. Anyway, landed on my feet but the bike bounced and landed on some rocks. I thought I bent the rotor because it was resting on a rock, but it turned out I bent the brake handle instead. Way to take it easy!

First lap: Dave (friend) starts and forgot to swipe his card to check in until the last second. He ends up in the back of the pack for the run and came out of the woods in 4th to last place - ouch! But he made up for it on the first climb and passed about 40 people and then started picking people off 1 by 1 to finish around 9th place.

I take the second lap and passed tons of people and didn't get passed once. Moved up to 6th. Official time just under an hour, but we had a mess up on the exchange and cost me a couple of minutes.

Next three go and we are sitting 3rd and feeling pretty awesome about it. Then I go for my second lap and felt like sh**. I didn't eat right or something, just felt bad and finished with a 1:01 and dropped us to 5th. I recovered and felt better my next time out, but my times didn't vary too much. I had one lap in the middle of the night where I ate too much and felt like I was going to toss my cookies and finished with a 1:10.

I think it was about the 6th or 7th lap into the race and we were back at 3rd and stayed there until around 2 or 3 in the morning where we briefly moved up to 2nd. But that was short lived and from there we held on for a solid 3rd place finish! (11th overall)

Great time and we were very happy with the results. Out of the top 20 fastest laps in our division, we only had one. We were just very consistent with our times, didn't have any major mechanicals and didn't get lost.

Said "hi" David A. before the race, but didn't see anyone from the #25 team the rest of the race, but I know they had a solid finish!

Back to Main Page