Do I have any vomit in my beard ?

Another downside of beards:
So Andrew (our teammate who was riding a solo this weekend) and L.Webb have more experience in solo endurance races. They both use this stuff called Ensure to replenish calories during the race. The past week or so I have been experimenting with the stuff. I'd suck one down before a hard ride, and frankly everything was fine. I figured coupled with my usual 24hr team race meal, I'd be good to go. Not so lucky. Starting my third lap, my stomach felt awful. I was burping Ensure, and anytime I drank anything, my stomach swirled. Just after the first section of climbing the single track dumps you into a field, I hurled everything; right over the bars. Best of all I never stopped moving. I just kept pedaling. Worst part of it, and again something folks never tell you about a beard, is that vomit will get stuck in it. So the rest of my ride, I had just a little Ensure Vomit in my chin hairs. Just enough to have a faint smell of that milky goodness. I had to scrub pretty hard to get that out. Yuck.

The race gets Hot
I caught the leaders on my 4th lap. It was almost 6:00am, and the sun was coming up. Stomach was feeling better although I could still smell ensure in my beard. Through out the lap I would get close to him, and then he would counter attack me. Finally on the last section maybe a mile from the transition area, I got around him. Down a fast twisty decent, he stayed pretty tight on my wheel. I slowed the pace to see if he was feeling spunky or not. I talked to him, "no sense killing ourselves now, we've got six more hours to fight this out huh?" with that I attacked the last little roller before the finish. I raced into the transition area about 30 seconds up. I saw L.Webb and said, "no pressure kid, but I just past the leader, and we're up by about 30 seconds." Give 'em hell...

Great racers, have a killer instinct. I am not a great racer. I am more of a grinder. I go, and I go, until I can’t. L.Webb is a great racer. She smells blood in the water, and has the instinctive drive to go for the kill; she knows right when to make the move. She came back from her laps, having built over a 3 minute lead on second place.