So my good friend Tony Cervati floated the idea of doing this NUE 100 mile MTB series by me and I took the bait and signed up while on the phone. Tony is a seasoned 24 hr soloist and has many more endurance MTB races under his belt than me. That said, I have only two endurance MTB events to my name...so this was a pretty big jump.
So whatever, right? Just go freaking ride already!!
So we head up the day before so we can check in...get our numbers and turn in our drop bags. All that goes smoothly. Hardest thing was trying to figure out when and where you might actually need the items you are dropping. Having never done one of these before I was totally guessing on this part for sure! So made my choices...just have to live with what happens on race day. Rock on!
Race morning the worst is realized...the night brought the rain!! Ugh! A nice wet, muddy start to the day. Get some caffeine and some oatmeal down the hatch and then off to the race site. We had about a 30 min drive over so time to focus on dealing with the race start..."did I choose the right tires...air pressure...do I have my floaties?"
Now we all toe the line...pros and all in a mass start. I don't really plan on seeing any of them again anyway so "SEE YA". Underway and feeling good to go.
The course starts with about 3 miles of pavement leading to the trailhead for the first 2 hrs of single track. This part was pretty awesome. We were pretty bunched up which caused me to go a little harder than I would have if I was by myself. I mean come on we have 100 miles to do so don't blow it in the first 20 right?
But anyway I get to the first aide station in 2 hrs and find out that it's like 18-19 miles and not 15 so I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'm on my expected pace for now...so a quick bottle fill up and peel off the arm warmers and then I'm back to it!
Now we get to the real long climbing...I'm totally not used to the climbing in the mountains so this is pretty tough for me. Even though we did climb mostly on the double track. That was the best thing though...I could just keep my head down and grind up, and up, and up...so totally different riding than having to climb on single track!!
Great thing about having to climb for what felt like forever was that awesome bomb down into aide station 4. That was the shit man...! Aide station 4 I happily excepted the offer to have my chain whipped down and lubed...that was much needed after the muddy riding! Shoveled in some pretzels and peanut butter.....more fluid on board and off to the next aide station!
Five was closer than the others and I was there in no time. Only about 20 miles left at that point so I knew that I was good to go with my plan of getting my ass out of the woods before dark. Few handfuls of trail mix...(drain the bladder)...and back to it. Up the 18% climb to descend into number 6.
At aide station 6 we drop into the single track for the last leg to the finish. It was at this point I was able to unlock my rear shock and put it to use again! I thought no problem now...I'm almost there. Of course that's when things go bad, right? Now I start getting that almost ready to cramp feeling in one leg...then that goes away and then I get it in the other...so the rest of the sweet single track I'm teetering on the edge of pretzeling up on the side of the trail....that really sucked. So I just was tooling along keeping it easy making slow progress, but at least progress. So that was good. Every minute I'm closer to getting done!
Finally I'm out of the woods for the last mile on the pavement to the finish. I figure I can throw it in the middle ring and hammer it home. But no...those cramps were right there...so back to the granny and just coast my friend!
So my first 100 miler took 11:35...I made it back before dark so met my intended goal!
Next year we'll see how it goes!!
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