Scott Dinhofer's 1st ever MTB race
Last weekend I entered what was to be a "Marathon" MTB race.
First, some background: Last summer, my neighbor Gil (a 50something y.o. physician in good shape) asks me to join him mountain biking. For those of you not in the east, apparently East Coast MTB is much more technical than anywhere else from what I am told. I was hooked from the first outing. I found, and still do, uphill technical a bit unnerving, but love the flats and really enjoy the downhills.
The typical ride ended with Gil shaking his head saying, "I can't believe this is your (1st, 2nd, etc) time on an MTB. Often we would do this on Sunday afternoons after I did a long bike and a long run as prep for the NYC Marathon...
This year, another friend did the Wilmington/Whiteface 100 qualifier for Leadville and the hook was sufficiently baited. While riding a full suspension 26er that Gil was lending me, I decided to get my own bike and get one that is set up for doing Longer distance marathon events (Sworks, carbon 29er, hardatail), which means it is not ideal for the very technical stuff we encounter in the local MTB parks.
I should also point out that I go out sufficiently padded. I wear a combo knee/shin pad and a complete upper body protector that is a mesh jacket with forearm, elbow, shoulder, back & front hard & or soft pads on it. This is mainly because I had an unknown hairline fracture to my shoulder last year in my 4th time out
.
My Leadville 100 finisher friend reached out a month or so ago and asked of I was ready to try a race, there is a great place in Vermont just north of Killington, the race is a 6 hr race and you do as many laps of a 12 mile course as you can. If you go to the website, they have great gopro video of the course, it looks pretty benign... http://www.peak.com/bike-races/mtb6/. I figured 6 hours? I need to get a six hour ride in for IMAZ prep, why not approach this as a good quality training day?
So, up we went on Friday afternoon, checked out a little bit of the course and learned that each 12 mile loop has 1800 feet of climbing! Got a good dinner on the Killington access road and went to bed. MTB races start a bit late as it is too cold in the morning, so I went for an easy 3ish mile run in the morning. When we got to the race site a few miles from our hotel, I realized I left the keys to unlock my bike from the rack in the hotel room. So, I returned to the hotel and back to the race site, fracturing more than a few speed limits in the process and got all set up. Biked down to the start area with 90 seconds to go to the mass start, of course, I missed any special instructions...
First you must forge a shallow river
, but it is a good 50-65 feet across, everyone, including me ends up walking 8 inches deep in water. Hop on the bike and get climbing. Lots of long climbing and series of switch backs drop you after 4 miles to the feed zone where we previously drove to drop our self packed aid station goodies.
then it is off to more climbing. soon after summitting the mountain, there is a hut up there, there are a bunch of flattish switchbacks that drop you into a heavy forested trail called "The labyrinth." This trail has very heavy exposed roots and the group I was with was going slow here. I ended up dropping my front wheel into a heavy rut between roots and because of my lack of inertia, i just went right over the handlebars. Point to be made here is that MTBers don't wear pads in "cross country" races.
This happened two more times, primarily because I was going too slow as I had lost my confidence. On the third fall, I jammed a finger pretty badly and just sat on the side of the trail for a few minutes to collect myself. Finally ending this section, I did a bunch of fun downhilling coming out onto a broad trailed uphill section that was marked with cones as a divider for creating a passing lane. We had done this trail as part of the initial climb, so I assumed this was the end of the loop and that we got back to climbing...I asked another rider around me which way I was to go at the end, back down to the river, or back up, and he told me he was signed up for one loop so he was returning.
I continued back up and did this upper loop two more times, of course the problem is that I was only logging 8 mile loops. The 2nd time through the labyrinth went surprisingly well and looked back wondering why it gave me such a hard time the first time through, which I now attribute to going to slowly behind other slow riders. When I got to the self imposed feed zone the 4th time, one of the RDs started chatting with me. When he asked what loop I was on and I replied 4th, he thought I was nutz
. It was then that we realized the navigational error I had made at this previous trail juncture and decided with the rain starting to fall and my legs starting to cramp, and my jammed finger being 2x the size of the same finger on the other hand and turning a nice shade of purple, that now would be a good time to ride down and do the lower part of the course on the way to the finish.
The lower part was not easy, lots of descending, but some pretty good uphill switchback work as well, until finally getting back to the stream. The trip back across was accomplished staying on the bike, though my feet stayed no drier for the effort. Upon finishing, I packed up my bike, got some warm clothes and enjoyed a post race veggie burger and snacks.
I also got to observe every finisher of the long race and most had universally similar quotes of "that sucked." "that was the hardest thing I ever did." etc. After my friend Scott finished and we cleaned him up, we went back to the hotel to change and drive back to NY. The funny observation we both had was "where did they film all of that teaser gopro video?" clearly it wasn't where we rode!
Thankfully, he told me that the Wilmington 100 race is nothing like what we just did and I am still on target to do that next June(yeah, I know....) In the meantime, the technical nature of MTB is appealing and a nice diversion from the hours we spend on the road & tri bikes!
Garmin file for the ride is here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/590230509 or Strava: http://www.strava.com/activities/194400276
Thank G-d I am doing a plain ole OLY this weekend 
Comments
Ah, memories… do it while you can, Scott. Reminds me that mountain biking like this is two parts anaerobic agony (on the sway up) to one part gravity induced terror (on the way down). The agony I was OK with, the terror I never got used to.
Next up for you: Xterra!
I consider myself pretty strong at bike handling skills and I owe that to my early days mountain biking and dodging roots, trees, etc.
I've been mountain biking in the east, midwest, and the west. They are all quite different. Midest and east tend to be more technical with roots, etc. Out west its rockier and a lot of the trails are more developed.
My cousin is a multiple time Leadville 100 finisher in the early days of the race. It's become a bit commercialized but still on my bucket list. If you haven't seen it there is a cool documentary called "race across the sky" that's worth seeing.