9 Hours of Hilbert was a painfest and I loved every minute of it. It started like any other XC race does, with testosterone pegged and everyone trying to get into the woods first. Jeff and I ended up around 
the 6/7 position going into the woods. That was cool until I realized we ended up behind a roadie pretending to be a mountain biker – he was killing us in the turn and before I knew it everyone in front of him was gone. Once we got to an open area Jeff and I passed the roadie and opened up a gap. Before I knew it I was alone – and rolling solo for about 3 hours.
About 3 hours in I saw a guy roll through the pits, I was worried that he might be in a position to knock me down a spot so I worked on wheeling him in. Once I passed him we spent the next hours fighting back and forth, it was pissing me off – I would catch and pass him then he would roll through the pit and I would have to start all over again. Eventually he ran out of steam and couldn’t keep up – but the nice thing about this battle was it pushed me to overtake the 4th place guy (I didn’t know that at the time)
On lap 11 – I was ready to call it a day I was so tired. So I check with officials to see how I was doing and they told me I was in 3rd place. I guess just that gave me some energy because I felt GREAT on lap 12 and 13 – however lap 14 might have been the longest 6 miles of my life.
When the day was over I had 14 laps for 84 miles at 8 hours 27 minutes – taking 3rd place and my first XC podium finish.
Special thanks to Jeff for helping m
e top off bottles when he was taking breaks – and to my Coach Dave K!
Nice job Mancil! And great writeup… I can’t even imagine riding that long and far.