Unofficially Official

The preliminary results are in and I've got some good news and some bad news.

The good news? My 1 and only official race lap was actually 1:29. Pretty sweet.

The bad news? Dylan's lap wasn't even counted, leaving a 1:36 idle time between John and myself and putting your beloved Earthlings in 3rd to last place in the 5 person coed category. Before the race, the organizers announced that they had technical difficulties with some of the RFIDs and some small number of racers had been deleted from the database. They assured us that the problem would be fixed.

And they've decided to call the race at 8pm, making it 8 hours of Moab. It was probably the fairest call to make, but definitely a tough one. The official communique has more details on the decision;

The race course had some of the scariest conditions ever encountered at this epic event. Racers on-course during the deluge experienced waist-deep flash-floods, chain-binding, brake-pad wearing mud that forced many into walking mode, gaping erosion ditches that seemed to appear out of nowhere and most dangerously of all, bone-chilling cold that brought many to near hypothermia.

...Some teams asked if the canceling of a lap (allowable under the rules in normal racing situations) would be allowed for this course closure situation. The race director allowed lap canceling, as per the rules. Canceling a riders lap would allow a team to forego a very slow, cold, night-lap that would create a late starting split time at re-start and instead give them the opportunity to start early in the re-start and race that lap in much faster conditions in the morning. However, not all teams were aware of this strategic choice and some teams, in fact many of the teams in the lead who had just gone out on their lap were not able to take advantage of this strategy and significant inequities where created.

I've been in touch with the organizers to try to get our results fixed up before they're finalized. Either way we all had a great time riding our bikes, hanging out in the desert, and talking Google. Here's to seeing Dylan's lap counted!