Change was in the making when I checked the weather a week ago and saw nothing but sun/80F everyday this week. Could it really be? After enduring some of the most hideous conditions last year a the Pisgah MTB Stage Race I could definitely live with this nuance! Despite draggin’ my tail cross-country after winning the Capitol Forest 50, I made it to the beautiful town of Brevard, North Carolina before two in the wee hours Monday. My O’Dell home-away-from-home host family even left the light on for me!
After sleeping in as long as possible, I rousted my still comatose countenance to Poppies for a luncheon with the local highschool mountain bike club. We ate some great food and told the younguns about the “life” of a professional racer. I tried my best to keep my cynicism to a dull roar which is especially difficult on minimal rest. After lunch, we visited a local charter school for more banter about bike racing. I was scheduled to address how to “balance” being a “professional” athlete with home and work life, which I found amusing since I may be the worst balancing act or the best depending on who you talk to! When we arrived and discovered that most of the kids were probably more intested in balancing on their bikes (little gals and guys), my audience let me off the hook. Colby Pearce and Sue Haywood did a great opening act, so I don’t think any of the children even noticed my senseless contribution!
Stage one was all new with a climb out of Dupont Forest to the top of some ritzy new development with incredible views of the southeast. Apparently business is kind of slow or a bit too ritzy since I counted about one house! More shocking was when one of the owners slipped me a business card urging me to relocate to “a great place for a pro athlete”–evidently he missed the memo on balance… but I digress. Still sleep deprived, I managed to more or less keep the pointy end in sight and only finished a couple minutes off the pace.
Stage two was the same as last year with a bunch of climbing up Clawhammer then my (not-so)favorite: Squirrel Gap. I only stacked it about four times on this trail last year and that was mostly going uphill! So I took it easy on the opening climb (quite possibly a first), and tried my best to keep composure on the squirrel hole. It was going well and I was just over halfway through the gauntlet when disaster struck in a big way–my cleat broke off. BROKE off. As in both 5mm bolts sheared off and my cleat flew into the bushes never to be seen again. I imagine some big, fat, white squirrel has it mounted abouve his miniture squirrel fireplance as a future post nut dinner talking point. I looked for the cleat for awhile, then determined that it was probably best to look for a way out. After some discussion with a course martial on the best way to return to Brevard, I continued on the course and after only one wrong turn made to Turkey Pen. For those interested, Turkey Pen is a few miles out of town on the way to Asheville! I even made it back to the start finish after the leaders so it still seemed like a long enough day.
After begging and borrowing a new cleat, I started stage three despite being an official DNF. This was a little blessing in disguise since the Lemans start from day one was usurped by a Somersaulting Lemans start. I took a picture of this foolishness and got on my bike pedaling slowly through the first stream crossing without even gettin wet and on up to Farlow Gap. This is the trail we missed last year, so I was pretty excited to get a crack at it’s legendary knarl. I went well and rode basically all the non-trials sections and felt pretty awesome about that. Apparently a little too awesome since I decided in about one millesecond to ride what could have been my total undoing! Think relatively smooth trail to blind switchback right, falling away in excess of 50%, punctuated but log cross ties (steps?!) a foot high, running out into a small rock garden. I did well to clean the upper half but clipped my bar on a post (begs to question why that was there!) to the left and yard-saled into the rocks. I did my best Fred Flinstone running impression with my hands, but still managed to nick my face on the ground busting my glasses and nose. After a careful inventory of all body parts, I was amazed to only find a few small flesh wounds on my lower extremities. After freeing myself from my bike, which was doing an Andre the Giant impression on top of me, I set about stopping the blood flowing from my beek and straightening nearly every component now crooked on my steed. I got it all going again and finished the stage with no further mishap. More about this:
Stage four was a bit more benign (if you can ever call Pisgah that), but still included serious bush-whacking, and some sort of bite or sting from a highly toxic creature on my ankle. Blessed with a kankle to complement my other battle scars, I even managed another upill endo to a stuck two-foot landing on Squirrel gap going the other way. My bike ghosted down into a ravine, but still managed to escape with no mortal wounds. Wow, this Scott Spark 10 took a serious thrashing this week! Climbing up Black Mountain was also pretty ridiculous as was the unheralded descent on Buckwheat. All together it was hard and rough but that is just about all the Pisgah has on its menu!
Stage five was insanity on bikes last year with rain turning to snow, multipie river crossings and come technicalities both up and down that would have been relentless without the near freezing conditions. As much as I looked forward to a pleasant, sunny ride on these trails, it was still a little bit frightening. We started out down the highway to Turkey Pen and I even tamed Colby’s breakaway to get a nice photo of the front-end just for old time sake. Then I portraited a super-sized white squirrel and rode with Sue up towards the top of Pilot Rock. With my Breck conditioning, I was able to scamper up the hike-a-bike near the top and try my best not to stack up the downhill. It is an awesome descent, but I was tired and a little hurt so simply riding all of it with a couple dabs was a minor victories of sorts. Unfortunately the spectators didn’t move the log at the bottom of the big rock fall so I had to dismount there to save some my Rotor Q-Rings. By the end I was considerably flogged despite riding 120 heartrate for three and a half days. Here is more about the whole gig:
After all that the Pisgah could bring, I even found motivation to ride with the kids at the post race shindig and then managed to lose by a fraction of a second to Robert Marion in my first ever pie-eating contest. I may have come out on top, but Robert was able to store a lot more pie in his beard for later snacking!
Sponsors
Recent Posts
Archives
Follow Me
