02/26/2026
Race Report: 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo, by Kevin Claus
We drove down to “24 Hour Town” in the RV on Thursday morning. We found a spot on ‘Solo Row’ just off of the race course, near the start/finish. The first couple of days were spent recovering from travel, pre-riding the course and soaking up the 24 Hour Town vibes. I settled on a strategy of riding two laps at a time and taking short pit stops at camp to refuel. Nate (my son) was a superstar one-man support crew, making sure I had what I needed - bottles, real food, chamois cream, ibuprofen, bike adjustments - each time I pitted. The race began at noon on Saturday with a Le Mans start. Racers ran a few hundred yards to their bikes. It was hard to contain the excitement on the first couple of laps and I probably went out a little hot. I settled in cranking out 1:25-1:35 laps and was able to maintain that pace for most of the night. “Just keep moving” became my mantra. The only snafu was riding about 30 minutes of the “sunset” lap in near-total darkness after failing to grab lights at the appropriate time. My body held up remarkably well - I was mostly coherent like in my other 24 hour adventures. It became difficult to get the HR up after 12+ hours - just keep moving. I must have been passed thousands of times. One team averaged sub-1 hour laps to finish with 25 laps! A solo rider finished with 21 laps! I was operating on a different schedule, aiming for 15. I heard much about the sadistic cholla, but I did collect only a couple of spines in my 24 hours by getting a little too close on a corner. Sunrise was beautiful but not the emotional boost I was hoping for. I was starting to feel some pain in my contact points - primarily the hands. My last pit stop was a little more than an hour before noon and I checked on my competition in the solo singlespeed category. It became clear that I wasn’t going to catch first place and wasn’t going to be caught by third place, so I rested, ate, talked with my crew and began to celebrate the accomplishment. When the clock struck noon, I rolled down to the finish to log my 15th and final lap. The final stats: 246 miles, 18,800 feet of climbing, 2nd place in Solo Singlespeed.
