After my terrible night of barely any sleep and many emergency jogs into the woods, I got up, got my junk organized, filled all my bottles and camelback, and went to the start line. Lining up at the start was 112 people for the 50 miler. I could immediately see I had the LEAST appropriate bike in the group. People seemed to be mostly on 26 inch 4” travel full suspension xc bikes.
I had made a critical mistake which was not preriding the course at all. This was to have a big effect on my race. The gun went off and the pack shot up the road to the a short ATV trail climb that had me at max heart rate immediately with tons of skinny dudes in spandex passing me. This is bad. Then there was a downhill right away that was about the scariest thing I have done on a bike due to all the yahoos around me that don’t know how to ride down hills. I thought I was going to be hit by, or run into, someone any second. Bad course design to have a congested downhill 2 minutes into the race. They need to start with a longer climb to sort out the pack.
Right away I noticed the TOTAL LACK of course markings as we rolled down a big dirt road to the flats. And then, I saw a marker that pointed straight ahead, but everyone was turning left!!! What the ....! I followed the group and started a good climb past some houses and into the woods on trail. Again, barely or nonexistent markers. This is the part where you would expect spray paint on the road with arrows. Nope.
Up this first real ascent I labored trying to not go too hard since I knew I had to do this for the next 6-8 hours or so. I saw a few marking flags at one point and figured they were saying I was on the right trail. At the top of this climb I saw a bunch of racers yelling and running around apparently trying to find the race route. No markers. No tire tracks. Three trail options. So much for the awesome course marking I heard about the night before! In the hectic mindset of the race start I followed a group up a trail I KNEW was the wrong way, but I had no way to find the right way. In hindsight, I should have backtracked the way I came up until I found the turn, which was at the flags I had seen earlier. In the heat of the moment I just felt I had to keep moving, and thought that we would get back on track pretty soon based on some comments from some of the group. It was pretty demoralizing to have this happen this early in the race. Anyway, it ended up that we did an extra hour and maybe added 8-10 or so miles to the race course, including a LOT more climbing. When someone had said “We can get back to the road this way” I figured they meant 15 minutes or something, not an hour plus. I was pretty angry at this point.
The misdirect really messed things up in my fueling plan and I didn't bring backup calories for such a contingency. My one bottle of Perpetuem didn't last the 3 hours it took to get to the first aid station. My water just barely lasted. So in the first leg I already was bonked. I refueled at that first station, ate a clif bar, took two Endurolites, drank two bottles of water, refilled my camelback, and mixed another bottle of Perpetuem. The second section was STEEP AS HELL right out of the gate and I was redlining hard. It was also hot as hell out like 95 degrees. It was 3 miles of mostly pushing up a sandy two track. During this section I was thinking I should turn around and quit. I was going SO SLOW and just redlining my system it was really ridiculous. The leaders in the 100 miler started passing me in this section, looking like machines cranking up this stuff that was killing me. Tinker Juarez, a mtn bike racing legend, and local endurance master Bill Martin passed me on the steepest hill of the whole course so far. Tinker was pushing his bike, which gave me a small bit of satisfaction, and close behind him was Bill cranking in the granny gear. "This is brutal...." croaked Bill. I kept pushing till the top of the sand hill/hell and then hit the Continental Divide Trail singletrack which was where things got a little better. Fantastic trail. Not as steep climbing. Somewhere in this part I started getting leg muscle cramps which was a new experience for me. Super painful. Had to get off and walk or pedal super slow. They went away pretty quick but scared me into going slower still. At 5 hours I kind of got a second wind and settled into a rythym for the rest of my race. I also ran out of water and Perpetuem at 5 ish hours. So for the last hour I had no water. Doh! It was rainy by then though and not quite as hot.
I finally made it to the second aid station. I was a little out of it but not too bad. I was cashed for any sort of steep climbing though, and the next section was called the 8 MILES OF HELL. All up. Steeply. I could have kept going but it would have been pretty dumb to push my bike for the next 8 miles at a snails pace. I had already done what I could tell was a TON of climbing with my 200 pound self. I decided to call it good as I had done 33 miles in 6.5 hours. I figure if I hadn't gotten on the wrong trail early and added a bunch of miles (6-10 depending on who you ask) and climbing I may have made it up the next 8 miles and THEN quit...haha!
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