I did Lodi on a 3 men team with 2 guys from the GMU cycling team. We got there around 7 pm, set everything up and one of them gave us bad news... he had forgotten his lights. Luckily the insane guys doing the race "Solo" had tons of spare things including lights. This was my first mtb race and also my first mtb night ride, so to make things more interesting my teammates decided that I was going first. To thin the pack a little bit, at the start of the race everyone had to run 100 yards to where the bikes were. I took it easy because the "solo" riders were sprinting to the bikes and I didn't want to get caught and passed by a lot of people on the trails. I'll rather pass people.
The course was set up so that a lap took from 45 (very fast) to 55 minutes with slow riders doing 1+ hour laps. The course was fast and tight with a lot of turns and technical sections. I started passing riders and getting used to night riding in the trails. When I was getting to the bottom of the second decent I overshot a turn and crashed into a tree. I wasn't hurt and the adrenaline from the crash kicked in and I finish pretty strong that lap. We were doing 1 lap at the time, then we switched to 2 at a time and back to 1.
One of my teammates was riding a single speed so we didn't think at the beginning that we were going to be racing for the win but that changed later on. The rest of the night went on with out problems. Once the sun came out, we were able to put some fast laps and with about 3 hours left we found out we were in 3rd place. I managed to crash again, this time in the flat section but no time was lost. The weather was great until I went out on my last lap which was the second to last overall. The trail was very slippery and the roots were sending everyone down. I rode carefully on the technical parts and tried to make up the time in the flats. By the end of the my lap the rain was gone and when I got to the check point one of my teammates said we were 1st at the moment. The last guy went out and the team in 2nd place came in 45 seconds behind me.
We ended up winning by almost 5 minutes as our last guy did a great job and the rival rider was cramping. It was a tough race, with basically no sleep. I had a great time and I'm looking forward to next year. We should put one or two teams together to do this race.
Just as a note, we did 14 laps. The "expert" winners did 16 laps, the "solo" winner did 14 laps (INSANE). The best lap time was an amazing 38:48.
Congrats to everyone who raced this weekend at Poolesville and Leonardtown. Brian I hope you are feeling better.
Rodrigo