Well early in the year the Whiskey 50 went onto my 2011 race Calender. I had heard from Revolution teammates and others of how fun and challenging this race was.
I talked my good friend John Moss into going to Prescott Az and racing this event together. It is always fun going away with John and riding bikes together, it's a bit tougher on John to get away now that he has two small children at home and a demanding job to juggle as well...Thank you Marissa! lolly on the other hand has been married to me for 28 years and is always ready for a girls weekend while I'm out of town, and she is also very supportive of my bike riding, thanks my love.
John and I made the 4 hour drive to Prescott on Friday and had time to pre-drive some of the course...notice not pre-ride, but pre-drive...much easier on the legs. We then found our hotel and got some food in our bellies. We made it to Whiskey Drive and walked around the booths and checked out the downtown for a while...very good support from the town with this event. We did the pre race meeting and then got our pre race ice cream and headed back to try to get some sleep before the big day, sleep before a race is always a difficult thing to obtain for me the night of an event but all in all I slept okay.
My start was at 7:00am and the weather had been fairly cool so I suited up with a couple of layers and hoping for it to warm up. The Whiskey 50 is a big event, there were about 250 of us taking off and that was with no pros, they raced on Sunday. The tough part of this race was the first 4 miles of pavement, it steep and then steeper, at the top before hitting the dirt it jumps up around 17 percent and we were riding at a brisk pace. My plan was to stay in the front 15-20 percent so not to get behind slower riders when hitting the single track which I accomplished but to no avail, as soon as we hit dirt we came to a complete stop...and everyone was yelling and making stupid comments about other riders and doing crazy things like running around through the bushes to gain a spot or two...it really didn't matter it was a long day and a lot of miles.
It was a fairly tough climbing for the next few miles as well, but because of the amount of riders the pace wasn't to fast and things started to sort out which was great. By the time we hit the short down hill sections things were opening up...and then we started climbing again. In the Whiskey 50 there is about 7,400 feet of climbing so there is a bit of climbing in the course which I like for awhile but it was a long day. I really enjoyed this event, but i must say there is alot of fire road riding is the event, but I knew that going in...but it is like a pure 12 miles of 4-7 % fire road at one point and it starts to wear on you after a hour or so of spinning up the mountain.
I completed the race in 4:24 or about and thought for an early of the year race I felt pretty good and had a great weekend it with John. John also did extremely well and we both left feeling like we got our monies worth.
Good times in Arizona!
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