Muddy Buddy Ride & Run 2009

Zach and I trekked down to Richmond, Virginia for our second Muddy Buddy Ride & Run. We learned some lessons from last year’s race and had a decent game plan to win it this year:

We marked our bike with orange tape so it’d be easy to find at the checkpoints. This worked really well.
Since there are 5 legs to the race and Zach’s the better biker, he biked first and did more biking. I did 3/5 of the running.
We got more sleep and weren’t out drinking too late the night before the race.

We also planned on getting to Pocahontas State Park early so we could relax a bit before the race, but since Google Maps failed me again (for the last time), we pulled up very late and got our packet and numbers affixed about 30 seconds before our wave started the race. Yikes.

Despite the frantic start, things went well until we blew a gasket on the bike. I rode my first leg of the race with one gear (the lowest), which made it a bit more difficult than it should have been. Apparently Zach had even more troubles because I was left waiting at the last checkpoint before the infamous mud pit for about 10 minutes. Usually the bikers finish first and wait for the runners there. The most upsetting part is that I finished the run before the team that came in third place in our division so we would have gotten in the top three without all the bike problems. Ah well, there’s always next year.