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Outside Magazine May 2003

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The Hard Way
Misery Loves Company
In 24-hour mountain-bike races, riders bond over singletrack and sleep deprivation. What's not to like?

By Mark Jenkins


	(Illustration by Olivier Kugler)

IT'S 3:30 a.m. AND DARK AS COAL, and we're hurtling through the forest on bicycles. Numb with exhaustion, bleeding, primeval, we duck eye-gouging tree limbs at the last second, bounce madly off boulders, skid through hairpin turns, slingshot over jumps into abysses of blackness.

A narrow bridge, a swooping turn, an ascending trail, then a bunnyhop onto a singletrack cutting up through the trees. The bobbing lights of riders on the switchbacks above compel me to put my mind into my legs. It's as if I'm riding inside a tunnel. The tunnel moves with me, vanishing behind my rear wheel. I spin out in the first dust-bowl dogleg, cut tight and catch it right on the next turn, and go wide, thumping rocks, through the next. It's steep, but I can still maintain cadence. Sweat's burning my eyes and oiling my thighs. My chain is grinding, my legs are groaning, and my mind is trying, in its foggy, debilitated condition, to block out the searing in my lungs.

Suddenly there's a rider in front of me, and before I can yell "Track!" he has pulled off to the side. As I crank by, he gives me a push on the rear and shouts, "Go for it!" with such enthusiasm that I want to stand up on the pedals and hammer. I catch another rider and she gives way, dismounts, and shouts, "Go, man, go!" I pass a half-dozen riders on the uphill, all of us trying to survive this night of the living dead, and every one of them shouts heart-buoying words of encouragement.

Then I hear heavy, fast breathing. Before I can look over my shoulder, I'm overtaken by a rider as if I were standing still. "Hang in there!" he squeezes out. I try to catch him, but he vanishes into the black night.

After ten more minutes—which takes an eternity—the uphill, at a stroke, becomes a downhill, and I'm shooting through rutted turns, attempting to maintain some semblance of control. I have momentarily released my death-grip on the brakes when the beam of my helmet light illuminates the rock.

It's a diving board of black stone. The trail jags right and zooms straight off this gangplank, and my brakes are squealing like terror-stricken piglets as I go airborne. My rear wheel flips above my head, sending me catapulting over the handlebars. I execute a double twisting somersault into the talus. The cyclist behind me lands the jump but slams on his brakes and skids to a stop next to my picayune wreck.

"That was something. You OK?"

I stand up, and the rider, an anonymous competitor in this 24-hour sufferfest, takes the time to check me over, making sure I don't have any bones protruding.

Shaken, I say thanks several times.

"Hey, we're all out here together."

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