24 hours of Racing - What it takes!

Posted Oct 5, 2004
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Sean "Noo-Noo" Noonan races solo in the 24-hour race in Boone over Labor Day weekend. Check out his story.

A 24-hour race is just that, a race that lasts 24 freakin hours. Riders can do it with teams of 4, 3, 2 or the ultimate suffer-fest, solo. Sean "Noo-Noo" Noonan set one of his biggest goals of this year to place at Iowa's second annual 24-hour race in Boone over Labor Day weekend. It would be his first solo endurance race of the year because scheduling never made it possible to attend a 24 with enough time to recover for the Labor Day event. Sean did pack a 24-hour team event and some 12 hour solo races into his calendar but the big 24 solo would be treading into unknown waters. As his coach, I committed to being Sean's camp leader. I would keep track of Sean's progress through the entire event, make his food and motivate him through the tough hours of near-delirium, middle-of-the-night mountain biking. One big hit against Sean going into the event was his age, endurance racers tend to be a bit older. Since much of the work is just being able to push through intense pain and sleep deprivation it requires a mental toughness that is not found in many young riders. In fact, many of the top endurance racers in the country are nearing 40 and even 50. Noo-Noo is only 18, and for most guys his age I would have recommended that they avoid the solo effort but I have to admit he is more headstrong than most teenagers I know and I trusted that he understood what he was getting himself into. Setting up for the race took some doing. Sean had a grocery list about a page long on top of an endless to-do list. All of which had to be done by noon on Friday before the event. Taking a page from the Bobke book of training I advised Sean that on the Friday before the race he should, eat everything in the house and sleep for 12 hours. Sean did just that - plus two extra hours of sleep. Our only wild card for the race was Sean's bike, or rather lack thereof. His bike was good enough to get the job done but it was not a full suspension and was lacking a mate. In 24-hour mountain bike races a full suspension bike can take a lot of the beating throughout the event and is always recommended by the pros, even for courses that do not require it technically. Having a second bike on hand is a big help as well. If the first requires maintenance then the rider can use the back-up and not lose any time. As it was, Sean was going to take a beating on his hardtail and without a back-up, any mechanical mishap could cost us dearly. Once the race was about to get underway, Sean and I made note of the primary competition. Of the 16 solo riders we felt that only two were as prepared or driven to go the distance against Sean: Dennis Grelk and Mike Blahut. We knew that the winner of the race would be the person who could sleep the least and stay on his bike the longest, hence the 24-hour double-meaning-mantra of, The Best Less the Rest. For the first few laps Blahut set the pace for the soloists with Noo-Noo and Grelk just behind but an intense 20-minute rainstorm during the second lap would take a nice chunk out of our sails. The course became very difficult to manage when wet and the bike got bogged down with mud. After a 31-minute opening lap from Sean, the third lap on the rain soaked course would take over an hour. Though by the fifth lap the rain had passed, the course dried and Sean set into his rhythm. He completed 10 laps in a row with an average time of 47-minutes per lap (not including rest). I pushed Sean to eat something every lap and I kept the food coming in a combination of fruits, pastas, cream cheese sandwiches, potatoes, cookies and energy bars. Sean, being a vegetarian, took any type of meat off the menu and in retrospect; I doubt I would have fed him much meat even if he was a carnivore. I was aiming for 300 calories and 20-35oz of fluid each lap and attempting to do this with the variety of easy-to-digest food, protein and carbohydrate replacement drinks, and electrolyte supplements. On top of the food we worked in a light foot and leg massage every few hours where I applied a muscle relaxing cream. The massages would help transfer any lactate acids that built up in his legs by moving the blood and circulating it back through the heart. It also helped wake Sean up as I prepped every massage with a cold water rinsing, sometimes I even splashed water in his face to help him focus. As the first twelve hours ticked by there was little difference between the top three soloists, but a huge gap between those three and the rest of the field. The selection had been made and as we predicted, Blahut, Grelk and Sean led the way. Since Blahut's camp was right next to ours I had kept checking on him out of the corner of my eye. I noticed that he was not taking much, if any, rest after each lap and had not seen him eat anything substantial in the first 6 hours. He had set a great pace and taken lead of the race but I predicted that he would not be able to maintain his effort through the night.

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I told Sean that we needed to stay as close to Blahut as possible and do our best to draw even before midnight. In a straight race, Blahut has the advantage over Sean, he can simply go faster and finish the laps sooner. But in this endurance event I felt that Sean had an edge over him with his preparation, fueling and recovery. Grelk on the other hand was hiding in second place on the course for most of the first half. His lap times were consistently 10 minutes ahead of Sean and 10-15 behind Blahut. I had to assume, not knowing Grelk, that he was just as prepared and committed as Sean and through the night he would be the biggest threat to win the race. After midnight each of the top three would be tested greatly. Dennis started increasing his lap times and took the lead over Blahut and now the two of them were both one lap ahead of Sean. As I predicted, Blahut hit the wall and decided to nap after 17 laps. At this point Sean was in both a good and bad spot, sine we failed to draw even with Blahut before midnight I felt that it was tactically advantageous to do so before Sean took a long rest. He had the opportunity now to take over second place from Blahut and begin to chase down Grelk but had been refusing food for over 4 hours. He complained of stomach pains for the past three (which was most likely due to the lack of food) but was now in a vicious cycle. His stomach hurt because it had no food but was now too upset to comfortably digest anything. The opportunity was there to make our move but with Sean's fatigue it would be very difficult. At just past 1:00am Sean begged me for rest and crumpled over in pain, it killed me to do it but I forced him eat food and complete just one more lap before he took a substantial rest. This would let him draw even with Blahut and each pedal stroke after that would be chasing down first place. The 17th lap was Sean's defining moment of the race; under unimaginable fatigue, food and sleep deprivation he had to complete the 5.6 mile loop of hills in the dead of night. He would not be alone though, using our cell phones and setting his to answer automatically, I was able to speak directly into his ear piece and he could also talk back to me. I called him every 3-4 minutes for the entire lap and inspired him with every emotion possible. I pleaded with him, cursed at him, made false promises, made him laugh and told him how great of a tactical move he was making. The only emotion I didn't give him was my worry. Sean needed to finish this lap in one piece and without mechanical troubles to the bike. A task that is easier said than done when youre approaching 15 hours of racing. Sean was on his last leg and would surely need rest when he returned but I was also very worried about Blahut. I wasnt sure how long he intended to sleep. He and his wife had shut out all of the lights in their camp and to help ensure they got a peaceful (and lengthy) rest I shut down all of the lights in mine. I turned off my DVD player, never walked by their camp and asked surrounding camps to keep it down. People were sleeping and Sean needed them to sleep for a long time. Almost 70 minutes later Sean finished the lap safely and his reward was an hour nap. Now while Sean took his rest we had to watch as Grelk took the race. He rode consistently through the night and set some of his fastest laps while Sean and Blahut were asleep; it was a great move tactically and deserved applause. However, the race for second was up for grabs still. Blahut would have more rest than Sean and if they awoke at the same time I had to assume that Blahut would regain his steam and take the lead from us. Our only chance was to get in as many laps as possible before he woke and after Sean's hour nap I woke him up and told him our position in the race. It was now 4:30 in the morning and we needed to get at least 2 but ideally 3 laps ahead of Blahut while he slept. Coincidentally, Grelk had decided to nap at the same time Sean was heading out and the thought had crossed my mind that maybe Grelk would sleep for a while too, giving us a shot at first. But he did not; he dropped down for close to an hour and then remounted and continued on course. Sean did his job and around 8:00 in the morning he finished his third lap since the hour-long nap. Now Sean was three laps ahead of Blahut and two laps behind Grelk but the race was not over and, in fact, our second place was still in jeopardy. See, with four hours left to go, Blahut was coming off a 6-hour sleep and if he started clocking 35-40 minute laps compared to Sean's now 55-65 minute lap average, he could still regain second place. I gave Sean a 30-minute rest and told him that when he awoke he would have to do some of the best racing he has done yet. At 8:21 in the morning Sean went out to chase after Blahut and hopefully solidify his second place. That was the primary objective. Sean and I also had to be ready to make a move against Grelk; if Grelk had a mechanical or bonked too hard to recover we wanted to be in a position to take advantage. Sean returned at 8:55! Setting a 34-minute lap!! 3 minutes off his fastest lap time and only 4 minutes off the fastest lap set for the entire race. This was an outstanding accomplishment! After 20 hours of racing, only 90 minutes of rest and hardly any food for the past 10 hours Sean did a lap 10 minutes faster than Blahut who had rested for over 6 hours. Sean followed that with a 46-minute lap coming back into camp just before 10:00am. Those two laps were phenomenal and I'm still not sure how he pulled it off. In retrospect, we could have stopped racing there but I did not want to leave anything to ch ance and told Sean that he needed to finish one more lap in the next hour to leave no doubt on his second place and 50 minutes later he had done just that. The final tally for Noo-Noo was 23 laps and 2nd place in his first ever 24-hour solo race. 2 laps behind Grelk and 2 laps ahead of Blahut - the three of them were head and shoulders above the rest of the field. I do believe that Sean dug deeper than he ever has before and pushed himself through an immeasurable amount of suffering, both physically and mentally, to achieve what he did. I am very proud of him. He learned that pain is a part of bike racing and the pain you feel in your legs is just the tip of iceberg. That disabling pain can spread to your stomach, your heart and your mind; how we overcome that pain is what defines our sport from the rest. Congratulations Sean! All of Noo-Noo's information from the 24 is attached in a Word doc. 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