Results:
Keith Flood 7th Place Solo Open Single Speed – 16 laps

Bryan Staby 16th Place Solo Expert Men 16 laps

Shannon Mitchell 3rd Place 2 person Women – 15 laps (total combined)

Twyla Robert 1st Place Solo Beginner Women – 13 laps
LeeAnn Pickle 5th Place Solo Beginner Women – 8 laps
Kelli Badillo 7th Place Solo Beginner Women – 5 laps

Recap:
What is Boggs? Boggs is a State Forest near the town of Cobb in Lake County. If you rode to the top of Geysers, then went cross county heading North into Lake County, the next mountain would be Boggs. Boggs VI is the 6th incarnation of an 8hr MTB race that can be raced as solo, duo or 3 person team. Red Peloton was well represented at the race this year which was great to see. Weather was a huge factor as it is every year at this race. We attempted a pre-ride two weeks prior to the race and a few brave souls followed me up to Boggs one snowy Saturday and found 4 inches of snow on the ground. The scene reminded me of a Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in the forest with lots of puffy snow on the trees and ground.

Needless to say we were all a bit worried about what kind of weather we would have for race day. Brian and I headed up early Friday, the day before the race to secure a pit area on the course. We got all set up with tents, EZup, table, work stands, etc. only to find that the course was being re-routed. We still had 45min until Fork Catering was ready to serve up lasagna so I decided to move our bedouin camp to the other side of the campground along the fire road so we could be on the course with our pit area. Normally the course lap covers 10 miles with 1200′ of climbing on mostly single track and some fire roads. This year due to the all the rain and snow, the ranger said they would only allow the course to run on fire roads. This resulted in a much shorter lap of under 5 miles with 800′ of climbing per lap. It was pretty much like an 8hr dirt criterium. Good news is the weather was good, no rain and the temps were mild.

The horn went off at 8am and 400 riders took off, unlike a road crit or road race, all categories were racing on the course at the same time. Since the course was all fire road, there was plenty of room to pass but due to the short lap distance, you were always riding with someone. After a 3/4 mile climb from the start, we hit the first decent, conditions were really good for traction but there was also plenty of soupy mud sections. On the back side of the course was a long downhill section that despite being a fire road, was very technical to navigate around big rain ruts and lots of rocks. About a 3rd of the way through the race I saw Kelli sitting on an ATV, my first thought was she was cheating and going to race on that thing, until I saw the blood coming from her knee. She was being attended to by a course EMT and was out of the race. The lap finished with a 1/2 mile grind uphill before rolling to the Start/Finish.

At various times during the 8hrs all of the Red Peloton folks would see each other out on the course or in our pit area and give each other an encouraging cheer to go…go…go! The promoter, Bike Monkey was having trouble keeping track of laps so we never got updates on standing during the race. This ended up being a real downer as you never knew where you were at or even who your competition was. I had a friend, Kevin in my pit keeping track of my lap times and laps but he was not able to tell me how I was doing relative to the rest of the race. I kept a steady flow of gel’s, drink mix and redbull going into my system and managed to crank out all 16laps between :23min – :29min per lap for the day. My total stopped time for pits was less than 15min over the 8 hours. I know when I came into my last lap I was DONE and left nothing on the course.

Other than Kelli’s mishap, everyone did great. I really appreciated the cheers of support and help with filling my water bottles and fine tuning the pit area so we could get in and out quickly.

Recap By: Keith Flood

Some of the ladies before the start		Keith Flood
Kelli Badillo	Shannon Mitchell	LeeAnn Pickle	Twyla Robert