Burnt Toast: Josh Tostato at 24 Hours of Moab US National Championships

From the very start Kelly and I rode together while I pushed the pace through the technical sections, with him pushing on the road sections. We ended up doing a ridiculous pace for the first 2 laps. I should have known better but I kept up the high pace into the third lap.At the start of lap three we dropped into a tricky sand wash and I came in a little to hot and crashed hard breaking my bar-end off and loosening my lock-on grips. This forced me to slow down a bit because I had to hold the grip to keep it on the bar. This tuned out to be a good thing; I had been running at my limit and needed to slow down anyway. The next three laps I slowed my pace way down and my legs were cramping and I puked a little bit! I was in rough shape and the voices of doubt started to enter my mind, I just had to remind myself that it was a long way to go and there was plenty off time to recover.

As night approached I was feeling better and better and I began gaining back the time that Kelly had put into me. Then when the darkness came, I was on fire feeling great and having a good time joking around with people. A little after 9 pm at the start of another lap the racer behind me said “nice job”, I said “thanks” and told him he could pass; but the guy says “its me Kelly”. I was like “wow”, I already caught him, feeling so good, I decided to test him and pick it up a bit and dropped him pretty quick. I kept the hard pace through the night and by morning had about an hour into Kelly.