Le Mans - Let The Race Begin!
Before the qualifying and race began, during the afternoon 5000+ roller bladers took a 8km city tour of Le Mans. The scenery was cool and the people even cooler, many dressed up in funny costumes. Here's my favorite (quicktime required): Fat Man Rolling
The pits started filling up about an hour before qualifying:
Qualifying, 8-10 racers per heat, one rep per team, time trial overall standings:
The bulk of our team hung out way up in the grandstand to chear on our racer:
Just taking in the view... hilarious!
Our master of qualification taking on the competition in his heat.
After qualifying and the city tour the team retired to theh pits to plan our strategy and check the lap times:
Then the race began!
Twenty-four hours of roller blading divided amoung teams of up to 10 is terribly exhausting! Our strategy was an initial rotation between all 10 members for the first 3-4 hours, 3-4 member teams in 3 hour shifts over the evening, 2 hour team shifts the following morning and a team cycle for the remaining 3 hours. I way in group C, so after doing 4 laps in the opening session I took to the tent to get 5 hours of sleep before my 4:30am shift started, damn it was cold!
At one point we were ranked as high as 270, but we fell well past that to approx. 380 (out of over 600) by the time the heat of the next day set in:
How did it all end? The finale tomorrow...
The pits started filling up about an hour before qualifying:
Qualifying, 8-10 racers per heat, one rep per team, time trial overall standings:
The bulk of our team hung out way up in the grandstand to chear on our racer:
Just taking in the view... hilarious!
Our master of qualification taking on the competition in his heat.
After qualifying and the city tour the team retired to theh pits to plan our strategy and check the lap times:
Then the race began!
Twenty-four hours of roller blading divided amoung teams of up to 10 is terribly exhausting! Our strategy was an initial rotation between all 10 members for the first 3-4 hours, 3-4 member teams in 3 hour shifts over the evening, 2 hour team shifts the following morning and a team cycle for the remaining 3 hours. I way in group C, so after doing 4 laps in the opening session I took to the tent to get 5 hours of sleep before my 4:30am shift started, damn it was cold!
At one point we were ranked as high as 270, but we fell well past that to approx. 380 (out of over 600) by the time the heat of the next day set in:
How did it all end? The finale tomorrow...
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