Second race in two weeks for me but a totally different kind of ride. The Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race takes place in the Pisgah Ranger District, just east of Brevard down 276. Geared and fully suspended this time which is a good choice for the rough terrain that you spend most of the day on. Lots of options in the race because you have seven checkpoints and only four are required to finish. The race starts out at 8AM with a passport revealed to each team of two that describes your checkpoints. I partnered with advracer who is a veteran of this race and even did Double Dare last year (two days of checkpoint collection in the same general area of Pisgah). We mapped out our route pretty quickly thanks to advracer's experience and some educated guessing the day before. We got out of the start about midpack and the only way to start was to go UP Black Mountain trail. You can ride the first third but it's slow granny gear climbing. The rest of the way up to the Turkey Pen intersection is lots of hike a bike. We passed quite a few teams just hiking and that was how we gained ground all day. The first CP was near the Turkey Pen trailhead just past where Mullinax trail starts. We grabbed that one and headed up Mullinax to the second one on Laurel Creek trail. You pretty much have to ride out and back on Laurel to get to it. Next we rode down Squirrel Gap and picked up the third CP along the way. This was some of the best riding of the day. Everything is generally rideable and the trail follows a ridge with awesome bench cut and great technical sections to test your abilities. The fourth CP was at Club Gap so we climbed our way up to Buckhorn Gap and then headed for more hike a bike on Black Mountain Trail. We decided the payoff for getting a fifth checkpoint was not worth the effort since the three remaining were very far from us and the finish line + keg seemed closer. We worked our way back to pick up 23rd place and were within 30minutes of 16th through 22nd place finishing. Great day and we were extremely lucky that heavy rain held off despite a gloomy forecast.
Why stand on a silent platform?
2 days ago
5 comments:
Great job JD! And yes, the siren song of the keg is always hard to avoid -- congrats for ignoring it for as long as you did.
Time to take all of that endurance and crush some measly XC racers at Little River! (Or, if not crush them, then use your experience to construct the envious "this race just isn't long enough to be selective" excuse -- always intimidating!)
thanks dude. it was such a great ride that the beer was more important than winning (file that in your excuse brief case).
A question, more philosophic than practical: when is beer not more important than winning? Is beer winning?
when the prize is more beer of course and yes.
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