12 Hrs. of Mesa Verde

I spent the evening last night putting things away from the 12 hours of Mesa Verde race, nearly two weeks ago. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind around the KDAY Racing compound. Since then I’ve had some time to think about the race, work on some projects and plan out the rest of the season. There are some important events coming down the pipeline so I could use a little structure on the calendar to help make sure I have everything in line.The 12 Hours of Mesa Verde was an excellent race. It was my first time riding Phil’s World trails and can say that it won’t be my last. Phil’s World certainly lived up to the high regard in which those who have ridden there held it. A 16-mile lap was marked out for the race. It was a big ring, rollercoaster style desert single-track course with a few technical ups and downs in the middle.For the race I hooked up with Josh Mortensen, Nick Fisher and Chad Davis on the Diamond Peak, Enve team. We were pretty confident going into the race that we’d have a pretty solid team and could even have a chance to bring home a win. The night before the race, Josh found himself coming down with the stomach flu. It wasn’t looking good for him and his hopes of racing the next day. With one down, we still had some strong legs between the three of us and kept our hopes high for a strong finish.Bright and early on Sat. morning the race began. I led out team out for the first lap, followed by Nick Fisher then Chad Davis. Josh was in no position health wise to pull off his best effort, so he decided to support from the pits. Little did he know, he’d have his work cut out for him supporting some of the solo riders also in our camp.After our first set of laps, we were in the lead. I had no idea until after the race that there were well over 30 teams signed up in the Open 3-4 Man group. The top 8-10 teams were all very strong. One of which included the Legends. A team made up of mountain biking heroes such as Ned Overend, Dave Wiens, Travis Brown and Dariy Price. We held the lead for a few more laps until about half way through the race, we began going back and forth with the top three teams. We slowly continued to loose ground and on the final lap we were sitting in 3^rd with about four min. The afternoon was hot and the competition was like fire on our tails. As our team stood in the arena, waiting for Chad to bring in a fast and final lap, the two teams chasing us found their way to the finish just slightly in front of us. We gave it a really good shot and had a darn good time doing it. Not much was left behind by anyone on our team. It was a great race.As for the others in our camp, they all faired out quite well. Jake Pantone 3rd, Jonny Hintze 14^th, and Quin Bingham 16^th, were all laying it down in the solo category. Debbie Mortnesen and Deede Pace 7^th, were laying down some hot laps for the duo female category and Blake Zumbrunnen, also suffering from the plague and Alex Rock 10^th, were giving it everything they could in the duo male cat.As the continuing rain here washes the memories of a great weekend in the desert, I look forward to more time spent pedaling in the sun and riding really good single track. For now though, I’ll just put on my rain jacket and dodge some puddles on the shoreline. See you next year 12 Hours of Mesa Verde.