Big Bear Ultra

After the Wilderness 101 last weekend, and no sleep all week, I figured that it would be a fine idea to head out to the Big Bear Ultra. After all, it's only 47 miles, right?

After some late evening shenanigans from the Night Club, who were apparrently trying to burn down tents and blow up pets with fireworks, I ended up getting a solid nights sleep.

Up at 6, stuffed my face, while enjoying more fireworks set to a stirring soundtrack comprised mostly of Pantera. At 6 am. I love West Virginia.

On the line, being told to stay off the road here; on this side of the fence there; be careful on this particular trail, because someone lost 3 teeth there last week, etc. I wasn't really paying attention.

Off we go. Do a little loop around that round building in the front parking lot, then into the woods. First section wasn't too bad. I spun out for a second and almost took out Don, when he ran into me. Pretty sure that he found one of the few mud bogs on the course, and had to put a foot down in it. Cruising along for awhile, across a field, and then into a trail labeled with a sign that read, "VooDoo Rocks, Night Club approved." Uh oh, that probably isn't a good sign. There must have been a ton of bad voodoo there, because I couldn't for the life of me keep my feet on my pedals. I was smashing off of rocks left and right, and just could not find a rhythm at all. I think it was about 8 miles in that I had decided to quit if the course continued like that for much longer. It was probably the toughest section of trail that I can ever remember riding.

Thankfully, before too long, it smoothed out into some double track kinda grass roads, but now we had to climb a little bit. Nothing too bad that I remember, and then oh, look at that, we're in the pines going backwards. Awesome! From the pines, across the airfield, to the next dirt road were a ton of fun, and really lifted my spirits. I caught up with someone, so I wasn't even riding by myself anymore.

Popping out at the next double track, the arrows point right. Is there a trail?? Oh, that might be it there. Yea, um sort of. Needless to say, I was once again pissed off, being on another trail that I could not get any momentum on whatsoever. Climb back up to the top, at the store, and follow trail back to the start area. Rolling in, I see Chris McGill sitting there, I guess he had an even worse day than I did. Fill up water, Don was at his truck, not his day either. Stick rolled past me as I was getting water, so I figured I should go and chase him down.

Caught up to him pretty quick, and we were back and forth for a bit until again, I was by myself. I was finally starting to ride ok, and was waking up a little bit, starting to get a little flow. Managed to catch another singlespeed racer, and one other guy at an unmanned water station. Hit a pretty cool new trail behind the trials area at the airport, which will be amazing once it is ridden in a bit. Cross the airstrip, into the first half of the 24 hour course. Super fast, and riding really well, I pass Rob Loehr, who looks totally dead. Hit the last checkpoint for a fig, and ask how many people had been through, and he said 12. I jumped back on the bike, and started hammering. Bombed the downhill, passing Schultz at the bottom of it. No water in the creek, are you serious!! Had a decent climb, keepin it rolling. Getting back into the final stretch of single track, I could see someone else about 1/4 mile ahead of me, and I told myself that I was going to catch him. Finally got him right at the lake, probably 1 mile from the finish. Cruised on the wide trail, feeling pretty good, and rolled into the finish.

Ended up finishing 4th singlespeed in 4:41, I think. Was only 30 seconds behind Benji, and 1 minute out of 3rd ss. Travis crushed it with a 4:17, and won by about 10 mins. He finished at the same time a woman finished up the 22 mile first lap, and she promptly dropped out of the race.

Afterwards, it took about 2 hours for them to start feeding us, which sucked, but at least the food was good, as was the free beer. Really happy with the result, but I need to work on not getting as frustrated in the beginning of the race.