So I guess since it's been 3 days since the PMBAR event I can sit down and relive the experience and get down in writing what the hell happened.
My teammate, (Greg Schuster), and I arrived at the Davidson River campsite on Friday afternoon. It was a great location for this race. I mean we were right across the street. Couldn't ask for a better place.
So we arrived and set up base camp then headed out to get some dinner. Needed to fuel up before the the big day..right! So what better than a burger and a cold one...ummmm, nothing that I can think of right now!!
So didn't get the best sleep the night before, but I never really do anyway. So nothing out of the ordinary for me in that department.
Up at 5:30 so we can get some caffeine and oatmeal into the system and then mount the trusty steed and head over to check in...plot the off limits trails and roads...and then head back to base camp for one last use of the porcelain before we get our passports.
8:00 am sharp we are given the order to open the passports and commence with the day's madness. We took about 20 min. to check all the points, plot them on our map and choose our route. We decided way before this race started that we were only going for 4 checkpoints and then heading home. This being my first attempt at this race, and Greg having a bad experience his first attempt made several years earlier...we just wanted to get this under out belts and get back for the cold brews to celebrate.
So off we go towards the first checkpoint. The route to checkpoint 1 is long and what seemed like non-stop climbing. I felt totally off from the start. Legs felt tired, HR was up there...and never was able to get a good full breath! This was like a total system shock having never ridden out there...I mean these are mountains! Raleigh in comparison is a parking lot!!
So once we make it to Checkpoint 1 and get one out of the way I settle down and figure the worst has to be behind us know. So head right back up the way we descended, so more climbing. But the route to checkpoint 2 seemed to go much faster than I expected and before we knew it we had 2 out of the way.
Now the long haul over to Checkpoint 3. Not real bad but now we had been out there for 5 hrs or so and we started to feel it. We both had some issues with bad line choices and some slips and falls, but nothing bad...just annoying stuff. The stuff that gets you when your tired! So mental focus time was in order and things smoothed out a bit after reaching number 3!
Over to checkpoint 4 was a haul with a few sections of pushing the bike up hill again. I was starting to wonder where the hell that point was. But right when you start to get to that limit then there it was!!
Now we collaborated with the teams that were at CP4 and sort of took a poll on which routes everyone was taking back to the finish! We all seemed to be going the same way so mount up and hit it!!
Big mistake that cost us some time was missing where the trail picked up the fire road. So we ended up pushing up hill in the opposite direction that we wanted to go. So that cost us about 45 min to an hour overall! Finally back to Black Mountain trail and the last bit of Bike-a-hike to the top before the bomb into the finish! That was a sweet downhill man...SWEEET!
So official finish time for us was 9:47...I say not bad for my first time out there and first time as a team! Next year we are going for the whole thing!
7 or bust!!
The race was a truly great time. We met some old faces and some new ones, and had some cold brew at the finish. Who can ask for a better way to spend the weekend!!
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