12 Hours of Tsali

This past weekend was the 12 hours of Tsali. Velosports sent two sport teams and Nate from Carolina Fatz was doing 6 hours solo. Frank and I left his house at 7:00 a.m. making sure that we were getting enough coffee into our bodies along the way. We met up with Doug briefly on the road to Tsali before he decided to make a pit stop. We arrived at the venue, and thanks to Smoky Mountain Bikes, we were able to set-up with them and have a great spot, easy to load/unload our stuff, and have a great position to watch the race and switch out riders.

We got everyone registered and ready to go, then started to get into race mode.
Dave from SMB got started early changing tires for me and fixing Andre's bike, hub, brakes, etc. to get us ready. I changed Frank's stem and now we were ready to roll, and Andre ready to run.

Adam and Andre started out the race with the LeMans start (600 yard run) and did the first lap. They came in from the first lap in 2nd and 3rd positions (frickin' awesome), and the race started. Billy and I were the 2nd riders, Frank and Doug went 3rd, and David and Alan took the 4th spots. One of the teams moved into 2nd place ahead of us and we started trying to catch them. We started moving between the 3rd and 4th places in the race with team # 30 making the race really fun. I started cramping on my 3rd lap, costing my team a little bit of time, but I moved my cleats and felt much better on my last lap. My last lap was in the dark and was great. The only issues I had were a raccoon running out in front of me and a bat landing on my helmet (it happened).

When all was said and done, Team #2 took third for the sport class and Team #1 finished 6th. It was an awesome day, we had no bad accidents, no big mechanicals, and everyone had an awesome time.
Thanks to all of my teammates, Team #2 and Team #1.

Thanks to Dave, Pam, Phil, and Karen from Smoky Mountain Bikes, they helped keep us rolling and fed.

Thanks to David and Terry Berger for a great event, the weather cooperated this time and the race was awesome!

Check out all of the pics