12 hrs of Ithaca (Ben VanHoose)

This past Saturday Eric and I made the trip to Ithaca to ride in the 6 and 12 hour Michigan Endurance Cup races. My preparation for this race was unlike my normal preparation for such an event. The weeks prior to the race were filled with studying for my final to test out of the Radiography program at Ferris and the Registry, which was the week following graduation. Needless to say I didn’t have a lot of spare time to ride and run as I usually make time for. Then as if that wasn’t enough stress I also needed to acquire some lights for the night portion of the race. After many emails sent between Chris, Eric, myself, and a couple pro riders with night riding experience I finally made the decision and made a purchase of a helmet mount light from Free Wheeler. Luckily our friend Adam Swann also had some backup lights he would loan to me just in case they were needed. With all of this going on I was able to sneak some time in to preride the course the weekend before and found it to be a easy, flat, fast course which was nice considering the 12 hour race would be the longest I have done. Also with everything else going on I started making calls to all of my family to let them know about the race in hopes that they would come through to help support us.

A few days before the race I passed my Registry test and was all done with school so I had nothing to think about but riding my bike for 12 hours on the upcoming Saturday. I was able to head back to Greenville a couple days before the race to hang around my parent’s house and also be within a 40 minute drive of Ithaca. On Friday my dad and I went out to do some grocery shopping since we had planned on grilling out during the race since it sounded like the support of my family was going to come through once again. Actually I was bribing everyone with beer and burgers so they would come watch Eric and I. When we left the grocery store I think we had enough food for me to live on for three weeks, but it was all for one day of hanging out in the d2 pit area.

On race morning we headed over to Ithaca around 9 am after dad was done with his long run. We arrived in Ithaca and happened to find Eric and Rachel at a party store we were stopping at. Then we headed over to he fairgrounds to pick out our pit area and get registration out of the way. With registration out of the way it was time to put up the tent so we could get out of the sun. We encountered a slight problem at this point when we didn’t have the top to the tent. Luckily for some reason I had a roll of duct tape and we were able to tape the side of the tent together and convert them into a top. It seemed to work out nicely and I doubt Chris and Eric knew they had a back up top like that when they bought the tent. We were going to have a busy pit area because we were going to have 4 riders being supported out of our tent. Eric and I were the two riding for the team, but we also had friends Steve Insley and Adam Swann racing too. Steve was racing the 6 hour and Adam would be doing 12 hours. Before the race Adam convinced me to take his extra set of lights and not use them as a backup as I had planned. Instead he thought I would be better off to run a dual light system (one on bike, one on helmet) and I quickly changed my plans, although the lights wouldn’t be needed for some hours in the future since the start was at noon.

It was finally time to start our adventures of 6 and 12 hours and the teams were sent out first. While the teams were organizing and starting I realized I had forgot to grab a can of fix-a-flat, which might be needed since the course was notorious for thorns. I dropped my bike and ran to the tent to get a can and made it back to the start before the other riders were sent out. The only disappointment was we were running the course backwards from the traditional direction and made things different from what I had prerode the weekend before. Then the clock hit 12:01 and all of the solo riders of both races were off. The pace was fast to start and was partly due to the course being wide open for quite awhile before going down to single track and partly due to 6 and 12 hour racers being mixed together. I settled in at a pretty quick pace to start, but noticed I was with a couple other 12 riders that usually turn in solid results. I was able to ride with Steve for the first few laps and Eric joined us after a couple hours of racing. The pace was still holding at a fast rate, my splits were averaging at 23 minutes per lap and continued to hold steady for the first 3 hours. The course was somewhere around 4.3 miles per lap and the single track was tight and twisty. What the course lacked in hills it made up for with areas of braking followed by accelerating. At some time around 3 or 4 hours I remember Eric saying to me that he was glad to be over half way done and he didn’t know how I would be able to stay sane riding for 6 more hours after he was done. I agreed with him that the course was somewhat mind numbing, but I was sure I wouldn’t have any problem spacing out and not thinking about the amount of time I had left to ride. Not too long after this Eric left me in the dust, which was either a result of him feeling good or my slowing from the blistering early pace. Every time I stopped in the pit area I would pay attention to a couple other competitors and try not to let them beat me out of the pits, due to the fact that we were riding on the same lap and I didn’t want to play catch-up later on. My dad was my main pit person, but he also had help from Robert and Rachel when it was needed. During those first few hours the first of my family members showed up to cheer us on. Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Lori, and my newborn cousin Madden were the first shift of family support. They were able to hangout for a couple hours until I had a couple slower laps, which was around the time Eric pulled away from me. They needed to leave due to the fact that my grandma can’t handle watching me struggle or suffer through any parts of my races and also they needed to travel back to Greenville to watch another cousin play in a baseball tournament.

From the time that the first shift of family left things get a little blurry. My lap times were running a little slower as I had backed down to average times of 25-26 minute laps. At this point every time I completed a lap someone new was hanging around the pit tent and gave me a boost to continue riding. My sister was one of the first to come and seeing her if always great. Then I noticed Uncle Alex and Aunt Missy were there. It became a game to see who was going to be there the next time I came around. My laps splits continued to stay around the same times. Then mom and pace (our dog) were there. You would have thought we were racing a couple relay teams out of our tent at this point. Then I notice Rich and Dianne, Michelle with her kids, who are all from the running group back in Greenville. Having all these people stopping at the race was definitely helping to keep me motivated. All of this and there were still more people to stop later on. During this time I had a very frustrating moment when my bottle cage was starting to rattle loose. I made a stop by the pits and attempted to tighten the bolts holding it on and had one of them break off with the thread still in the frame of my bike, I was very upset when this happened. This was the second time a bottle cage has rattled loose during an endurance race. We quickly took the cage off and I decided to carry bottles in my back pocket for the remainder of the race.

The night portion of the race was closing in on us and we need to have our lights mounted at 8:30 and turned on by 9:00 for our laps to count. The lap before the mandatory light mounting we devised a plan that I would stop and Dad and Eric could take care of lights while I tended to some personal needs. Then I was off and guess what…..some more family was now there, Aunt Tracy and Uncle Gary, Aunt Anne and Uncle Jack were now there to support me and help push me to the finish. At the end of the next lap my dad was out on course reminding me to turn my lights on so the lap would count. This was going to be an interesting time since I had never ridden with lights before, but I noticed right away Adam’s idea of running the dual setup was a good decision. The first few laps during the night portion were running a little slower, but not far from the normal times I was riding. Then I started to ride out of the funk I was in since breaking the bolt of my bottle cage. I was able to start riding fast and faster until my times were back in the normal lap time range. During the night laps my cousin Luke and his girlfriend Jesse showed up. Then out of the dark walked Adam Playter, our Bud’s Auto sponsor, who had come out to check this crazy race. I was down to 2 hours left and I was starting to be able to see the finish line. My garmin decided this was a good time to run low on battery and die. I would have to ride the last 2 hours without knowing what my lap splits were while on course and also I had no idea what lap I was on. The last hour went absolutely great and I don’t know if it was because the finish was so near or the extra energy Aunt Anne was beaming my way, whatever it was it worked. I felt like I was flying and I actually passed one or two more racers during this time. I even made it in in time to get the extra lap. It wasn’t until two days later that I would find out the two racers in front of me were only 1 minute and 4 minutes up on me at the finish of the race. If only we had one or two more laps….maybe I could have caught up to them. So I finished the race with 29 laps and a 3rd place overall. I am not sure what the mileage ends up being since it depends on whose distance reading you trust, but I had somewhere around 120-140 miles for a general range. I was very happy with my results and the fact that it was the furthest I have even been on my bike.

A huge thanks goes out to all the friends and family who came over to the race to support us. I know I couldn’t have done it without their support. Hopefully I didn’t forget anyone who showed up, but there were too many of you for me remember while trying to ride for 12 hours.