No one on my team lived particularly close to the Powderhorn 24 route, so we decided to sleep it out near race headquarters. Part of our race tactics was to save our riding power for the laps we needed to do, and we were taking fairly short turns riding the course, so a 5 mile jaunt home was out of the question. (Although I know many excellent riders who did ride home and back during the race, we thought this wasn't the best option for our novice team.) We pitched a tent outside of Freewheel and settled in for the race. No need for everyone to be asleep at once, but our borrowed tent was definitely large enough to hold all of us.

I think for many people the theme of the race was ride, eat, try to sleep. I have no idea what the solo riders did. Hopped up on that much adrenaline, sleeping wasn't easy. I didn't have to worry about sleeping for the first part of the night since that's when I was riding. "Conveniently," it didn't rain on me when I was in the tent...because I did the entire previous shift in a thunderstorm that let up just as I pulled into Freewheel to hand off my manifest.

Trying to snatch a quick nap on Saturday I could tell from the cheering exactly when my friends rode by. My dad called to say hi from a favorite bike destination back home. That was a quick conversation, as I wanted to get back to my nap, but between the cheering and my own excitement, it was hard to keep resting.