When the going gets muddy, the 4 Man Sport team, Wild HOGG Riders got tired. At some point Saturday night, we decided to bag a chunk of night laps and get the minimum 4 laps each done. We all had fun, but pushing your bike up and through foot deep mud was not part of it.
So, it all started when our team arrived at about 10 AM Saturday morning and were greeted by hundreds of bikers, and a short cool rain shower and partly cloudy skies. We all hoped there would be no more rain, and there wasn’t!
Our team captain, Ian started the race, running around the small pond with the herd of mountain bikers. It looks chaotic, but it does seem to stretch the crowd out, and avoid some, not all of the bottlenecks at the start. I came back to the start/finish/timing tent at about the 1 hour mark to see Kim (our non-man teammate) off and to hear any news about the course and conditions. The rider reports sounded like this “mud pits”, “un-rideable”, “walking, pushing, running”. The mud spattered riders and brown bikes told the rest of the story. More nervous than ever, I had about an hour to change into bike clothes and let my stomach churn.
Kim came in about 60 minutes later, maybe less, zipped the baton into pack and I was off. The trail starts easily enough; there is a switchback hill climb to wake your lungs up, then some up, down and around the hill. There is a single-track section at the bottom of a fast, smooth downhill section, you have to brake, shift, turn right and go up a Rooty track through the trees. I think I got this right on my first lap, and after that, I spun my rear tire on the same tree root for the next 3 laps!! Walkies!!
The rest of the course felt like this: carriage roads, up, down, around the mountain. Singletrack, some really short connectors between carriage roads, some longer, fun rideable sections, and some that just led you to Mud Land! I tried riding parts of it during the day light laps, and on my second lap was rewarded with and endo into deep, soft sticky mud. I wiped an inch of goo from my left grip with my goo covered hand, and pushed on. Literally, pushed my bike till I got to a section that was rideable. You know the end is near when you turn onto a singletrack from a carriage road and you can hear the PA at the campsite. This singletrack starts out fine, but turns uphill and very rooty. At best I could ride about 10 minutes of that, then I was pushing, again. When you get to the top, you see spectators, and for good reason. The trail forks there and the wider trail to right was a nightmare.
Everybody was calling it “the chute”. The mud was really deep and had a few deep holes lurking in it. The trail to left was straight and level for about 30 feet, and then it turns right, straight down, and intersects with the other trail, turning left. I choose the left side for all 4 laps, and for the first 3 I “walked” it. By walking I mean sliding down on my feet and butt at different points. It was so slick my feet would just slide down the hill! On my last lap, I used the straight section to get clipped in, get my balance, hang my butt over the rear wheel, and got down with style!! The section after that is some really nice single-track through the woods. On my first lap I tore through that, I cleared every rock and root in my way, and then hammered down the homestretch to the finish. On my last lap, I navigated the chute successfully, got into the single-track and proceeded stink it up!! I couldn’t get past anything, I was terrible! Even with that, my last lap time was 69 minutes, a little slower than my other day time laps, but not bad.
So that’s my story, I might do it again, but the long muddy sections were a bummer. The beer at the end of the race was not a bummer.
GRS