Big Wheel Racing

In Juarez Mexico the Chupacabras 100km race took place on Saturday October 13th. I, Rich Capener, raced with five friends and over 2300 riders on a nice hot day in Mexico. There weren’t any divisions, just one big field of riders looking for a race. We got to the starting line about 7:40am and the race started at 9. There were a few hundred riders in front of me and more keep squeezing in as you could see bikes pass over head, over and over again. After the start the riders shot over to the levy for several fast paced dust filled miles. Well things were going quite well after the levy and lots of local people cheering everyone on calling you “Animal, Animal”. For the most part it was two track most of the way till you got to King Kong then you started the first hike-a-bike. This wasn’t so bad and wasn’t too long and I still felt good. After dropping off this mountain to the bottom you had to deal with the dry, dry stream beds that had small rocks that acted like sand making it hard to pass. Next was the trip to the church in the middle of no where.Swear that church was in some old Clint Eastwood movie. Shortly after the church I had my rear tire blowout. It had a half inch cut in the sidewall so I had to boot and tube it to get back in the race. Next was the hike-a-bike from hell (Asphyxia). I think it must have been like one mile of pure hiking on a hot day with no signs of shade. Can you say cooking your brain. After getting to the top that’s where the fun started again. There where two corners that were a little tricky but I was forced to stop due to rider backup. After descending, things got really thinned out and only saw a few handful riders the rest of the way back. In fact, there were a few times I thought I was off course but soon would see event staff every mile or so. I ended up coming in 168th out of 2300+ riders. Not too bad for my first year at this event and I’ll be back next year wanting to break into the sub 100.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 10:38 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.