The Stoopid 50 2013

So what’s so stoopid about the Stoopid 50 anyway? It seems a silly name for a bike race. Rumor has it the race got its moniker when promoter Chris Scott first proposed the idea of a 50 mile backcountry mountain bike race in the majestic mountains of Rothrock State Forest. A friend bluntly told him: “There is no way I’m doing your stupid 50 mile bike race”. Who can blame him really…racing a bike for 50 miles over some of PA’s tallest ridges, on its rockiest trails is not most folks’ idea of intelligent activity.

 As I’ve mentioned before, races can be hard for different reasons. What makes this one so Stoopid is the climbing; there’s almost 7000 feet of it…long, soul crushing fire road grinds that never seem to end. While the Bearscat 50 punishes your entire body, the Stoopid focuses the pain primarily on the legs. This is not to say that it doesn’t present technical challenges; there are still 25 miles of rocky east coast singletrack to contend with.

Last year I rode this race exactly as the name would imply; Stoopidly. I wasn’t sufficiently recovered from Bearscat, which, like this year, was two weeks earlier…I made the mistake of trying to train through it. Then I went too hard on the start in a vain effort to avoid the bottleneck going into the first singletrack.  By the halfway point I was cooked. The cooper's Gap singletrack had put a hurting on my lower back (I had ridden my hard tail last year) and I limped home in full survival mode; finishing outside the top 10 in the Masters. Not good! This year I trained harder, smarter and was better rested…I was out for revenge on a course that had wounded me both physically and mentally. This time around it was Daniel, RogieRog, TJ, and yours truly on the start line representing Team BTR/EMP/VTC. Rog & TJ also had revenge on their minds, having been forced to DNF last year for mechanical reasons. Meanwhile, Bill was frolicking in VT with the FAM, Monte was recovering from Lumberjack, and Kris was busy chasing supermodels around Europe.

 The weather was questionable at best…there were some major thunderstorms on the radar, but they looked spotty and it was unclear just how bad we’d get hit. Everyone knew that if it rained hard the course would be a muddy, scary mess. The race began ominously, with the skies opening up on the first climb up Bear Meadows Road…but it stopped as quickly as it started and the famed Tussey Ridge singletrack was not as treacherous as expected. I held back a bit on the start, thinking of my previous errors, and let the fastest guys get into the ST ahead of me. I got stuck in a conga line of riders who had trouble with the techy stuff on Tussey, but I resisted the temptation to try passing them in the narrow ST. It was mildly frustrating, but I knew holding back now would pay off later. It actually gave me a chance to enjoy some of the spectacular views from the ridge.

A bike's eye view of Tussey Ridge

 As usual, Jesse Kelly was ahead of me, as was IIya Canter from MTBNJ and Joe Johnston from Black Bear. On the rocky descent off Tussey Mountain, the conga line was got smaller as riders bobbled, crashed or suffered flat tires. I saw Joe J. pulled off the side of the trail with some sort of bike problem…as I said this is a rough course...and by the time I reached the bottom of the descent, there was only one rider left from the parade, Chris M from NJ.

After a short flat section, big-ass climb #1 began: Thickhead Mountain. It starts gradually on a gravel road but after about 10 minutes. it turns to dirt and points sharply upward to about a 15% grade. I settled in to my easiest gear and locked my heart rate in at around 170, making sure I wasn’t burning any real matches. Despite the cool, 70ish degree weather, I was drenched with sweat by the time a reached the summit. The downhill off Thickhead is a fast, big ring fire road that lets you hit speeds of almost 35 mph. Somewhere on my way down I noticed a problem with my rear shifting. The rear derailleur was making strange noises and I couldn’t backpedal without jamming the chain. At the bottom it became worse, and I was forced to stop to investigate. A rock must have struck my derailleur on the descent, because the back half of the cage (the part that holds the chain on the bottom pulley) was completely gone. As Chris flew by, I put my chain back on, crossed my fingers and rode on. Having plenty of gels and fluids with me, I didn’t stop at the first aid station.

After a couple miles of paved road, it was back into the singletrack of Coopers Gap, and right away I knew I was in trouble, my chain jumped off the now exposed lower pulley and jammed on the first steep technical climb. I jumped off, swearing, and reseated the chain. It was clear this was going to be an issue, but how much of one I had no clue. The next 10 miles were some of the most gorgeous technical singletrack I’ve ever ridden. As rocky as it was, it still managed to flow beautifully, as it changed microcosms from low brush, to deep deciduous forest, to pine forest, to open fields…just amazing.

Sweet Stoopid Singletrack. Note the custom designed number plate.

It was so good that I stopped counting all the times I had to stop and fix my chain. I was losing time, but I felt good, and no one seemed to be catching me. I suspected that once the constant pounding from the singletrack was over, my chain issues would be as well.

I climbed the long paved road back to the aid station, where I knew I had to stop to replace my now dwindling fluid supplies. On the smooth surface I suffered no further chain woes, but when I got there, they couldn’t find my drop bag with my water bottles. 30 seconds ticked by, then another…I was starting to get freaked out. I popped some Endurolytes to ward off the first twinges of leg cramps that I was starting to feel. another minute passed, still no bag…I finally realized they were calling out the wrong number  (“4-OH 9, not 4-EIGHT-9!!!”), and when I corrected them they found it right away, filled my bottles and I was on my way.

The course now climbed back up Thickhead Mountain the way we’d come down…a long slow death march in this direction. It took a good 20 minutes to reach the top, where it split and bombed down into the valley on the Detwiler Trail which is a strait screaming dirt road drop. Halfway down, in one of those rare magical moments, two huge deer ran out from the woods and scrambled down the trail in front of me. With a sheer drop to the left and impenetrable steep woods to the right, they had no choice but to mammal-pace me almost all the way down. Very cool!

 My two furry friends dropped me near the bottom, and yet again I was climbing….another thousand-foot behemoth that started as a gravel road then changed over to a rocky fire break with indistinct lines. Although I had passed a few open-class riders in the last 2 hours, I had been mostly alone since the first aid station, so it was a welcome sight to see a racer grinding his was up the climb ahead of me. It was nice to have a (human) carrot to chase. It took me a while to catch him and when I did we chatted a bit. He said his name was Matt and this was his 1^st MTB race, but he did Ironman triathalons and that he knew the course. I told him he picked a Hell of an initiation and he agreed. At the top of the climb he lifted the pace and got a gap on me. Matt wasn’t in my age group and there was still another climb left, so I wasn’t willing to give chase. We flew down the last gravel road descent and I got back on his wheel for the final 500 foot climb to the fire tower.  I was glad I’d been a little conservative on the start because Matt was really pushing hard now and I used up any matches I had left to stay with him on the last push to the summit. My HR was at 176….I was working just hard enough to cause my right quad to cramp just before the last crazy downhill.  Matt asked how my descending skills were and I said “pretty good”. He said “ok then, you go first”…knowing what we were about to encounter.

The last 2 miles of trail is another reason this race is Stoopid.  It’s an insanely steep singletrack that plunges strait down to the finish. It’s scary even to riders with good technical skills, and the fact that I was now cramping made it that much sketchier. I bit my tongue and headed down, fighting through the pain of my cramping quad. A little bobble in a mine field of rocks caused me to dab and almost crash, but the cramp slowly subsided and I rode the rest of descent cleanly, including the gnarly rock garden before the 3 bridges that thwarted me last year. Right near the end I came up of Chris M, who I hadn’t seen since Aid 1; he let me by and I came though finish with a time of 4:45 and change.

Rog was at the finish, having come through several minutes earlier. We gave each other that look that said “Holy shit, was that unreal” It would prove to be a good day for everyone on the team, with Daniel and TJ both finishing strongly. As I suspected Jesse and Ilya and bested me, but I wasn’t sure how many others in the Master’s field had. Later I learned that I had gotten 5^th place, with Jim Mathews taking the win and Paul Simoes in third. 5^th was good enough for a podium spot and free entry to next year’s race…which I will doubtlessly be attending. I was happy. It was far from a perfect day, with my derailleur issues and that very long aid stop. I wondered if not for those issues if I might have moved up a spot…maybe, maybe not….who cares really. I’d beaten my previous year’s time buy 25 minutes and had a blast taking revenge on an extremely challenging race. And that, as they say, is really what it’s all about.

Bearscat 50 Suffer - Fest 2013

Expectations are a funny thing, others have them of you, and you have them of yourself as well. Either way, they can certainly apply a great deal of unwelcome pressure.  But let’s face it; mountain bike racing is not popular enough (at least in this country) for too many people other than the competitors and their friends and families to really care about it one way or another. So up until now, any pressure I’ve ever felt about achieving a specific result in a race has come from within.

But on Sunday morning as I was gearing up for the 2013 edition of the Bearscat 50, a strange thing happened…other racers I spoke to, especially those who were not local, kept saying the same thing: “Well this is your home course, so you should do really well today”. This is the sort of thing I usually just brush off, but after hearing it about a dozen times in the period of an hour, it starts to sink in. Plus, if I’m being honest, that’s exactly how I already felt. It’s true that Waywayonda State Park, which lies on the NJ/NY border, is only 10 minutes from where I lived for 5 years. It’s also true that I have ridden (and helped build and maintain) it’s gnarly, super technical trails often enough to know each rock by name. So you see, the pressure do well was palpable.

On the start line at 9am, it was clear that it was going to be a tough day. It was 77 degrees; not yet hot, but we knew it was going to get there before too long. There were roughly 40 other racers in the Master’s category; at least 5 of which I knew could give me problems. Jesse Kelly, who had clobbered me at French Creek 2 weeks earlier, was in attendance.  Luckily Jesse was crazy enough to race the Mohican 100 in Ohio the previous day, then he drove 10 hours through the night to do the Bearscat. So knew I had a chance against him in his weakened condition. It was a fast start…too fast in fact. I was sixth going into the first singletrack on Pumphouse. As expected, we caught the back of the Open Men’s field in about half a mile, right before the long rock bridge. This amounted to a walk/run/ride repeat through a massive amount of human traffic in one of the course’s most technical sections. One of the Masters leaders crashed hard in front of me and I passed another on a short rocky climb. Last year’s winner Ken Welch was off the front and out of sight…lost in the traffic. I was right behind Joe Johnston who looked very strong, and James “Willy” Wilbur was glued right to my back wheel.

The next 4 miles were a stressful series of hard, above-threshold efforts, as I darted past more Open racers in sketchy sections of some of the East Coast’s most technically difficult singletrack. It felt like I was going much too hard and my that heart rate was way too high. Somewhere on Tombstone I realized Willy was no longer on my wheel, but I was too focused on staying with Joe to look back to see how big the gap was. He kept putting time into me on the short stretches of fire road and I’d close it back down in the rocky singletrack. He gapped me on Cabin, and I caught him on Blueberry… gap on Old Coal, back together on Hemlock, gap on Cherry Ridge, closed down on Sitting Bear. And so it went until the half lap aid station, where Joe stopped for water and I rode straight through. I spent the rest of the lap with one eye over my shoulder, waiting for Joe to catch me. On Porcupine I caught my team mate TJ who was racing in the Open class. He confirmed that I was in second and that Ken had a sizeable lead on me.  It was good to have some company… we rode together for a mile or two through Plymouth Lane and into Hofferine. By the time I reached the one and only paved mile of the course I was alone again. I rolled into the feed zone at the end of the lap took 2 fresh bottles of energy drink and some Sportlegs. I had consumed a full 50oz Camelback and one water bottle on the first lap, which meant that my 2 fresh bottles would not get me through to the end of the race…I would need to stop.

As I started lap 2, a quick glance at my Garmin revealed an average heart rate of 169….yikes. I knew I couldn’t keep that up for another 25 miles, so I backed off the pace significantly. I was now feeling the effects of the effort, the terrain and the temperature; which had climbed into the high 80’s. This was going to be a long and painful last lap. I soldiered on through the technically fearsome foursome of Pumphouse, Lookout, Pickle and Rattlesnake; walking several sections that I almost always ride easily. I had some serious hot spots going on my feet and my hands were getting pummeled as well. I was in full on survival mode from this point on. I rolled into the aid station and filled my bottles. TJ was there looking dejected. He had stopped to give assistance to RogieRog when he flatted and unwittingly gave him his CO2 nozzle, so when TJ flatted himself, he had no way to re-inflate it. What a bummer…this would be his third consecutive DNF at Bearscat.

I pressed on, and as I climbed the steep pitch on Red Dot, I was amazed that although it felt like I was crawling along; my average HR had only dropped to 166, which I attribute to the heat and humidity. More amazing still…no one had caught me. It occurred to me then that whatever pain I was feeling must have been as bad or worse for my pursuers, which was a slightly reassuring notion at that point. I rode alone for the rest of the race, passing only the occasional Open class racer. Slight cramps began appearing in my left tricep and right calf. I took some Endurolytes was able to push through them. The twinges continued but they never got so bad that I needed to stop and stretch them out.  As I pulled onto Hofferline, I cursed it aloud, knowing that it’s relentless, zero flow rockiness was all that that stood between me and the sweet relief of pavement. I somehow managed to clean the last climb (which I had mentally resigned to walking) and scorched down Black Eagle to the park road.  As I came to the last rise on the road I got out of the saddle and burned my very last match to cross the finish line.

I was so relieved to be finished…this one really hurt. After a quick cool down I rode straight down to the lake and jumped in with my full kit on. Few things in life have ever felt so good. I can’t speak for the expectations of others, but I had certainly met my own…I checked the results and confirmed that I had locked up second place in the Masters Field, and 11^th overall. Ken rode a very fast race and defended his crown, beating me by a good 10 minutes. Well done! Willy held on for 3^rd, Joe battled some bad stomach issues but clawed his way to 4^th, and Jesse survived numerous crashes and rounded out the Master’s podium in 5^th. Those guys are all tough as nails!

As more results were posted, the toll that Bearscat had taken on the racers became clear: A total of 240 had started, and only 114 had finished the entire 2 lap course. That boys and girls is the definition of a brutal race. In fact, I’ll go on record by saying it’s the hardest  one-day endurance mountain bike race in the East. That of course is debatable, as one could make the argument for Michaux, Dragon’s Tale, or one of the NUE 100’s, but this is my blog so what I say goes.

I’ll be back in 2 weeks with another Stoopid race report. Till then, ride hard and have fun,

-G

Wildcat Epic 100

Lippmann Park Loop

So where do I begin? This is my first blog of the year and if it seems to be arriving a little late, it’s for good reason. A lot has happened, very little of it has had to do with mountain bike racing, at least not directly, hence my silence. I should have been on my 5^th race report by now, but for one reason or another, I didn’t make it to any of the races on my calendar until last weekend. These excu…er, um…reasons include weather related cancelation (Patapsco), scheduling (Patapsco rain date), laziness (Marysville relay), injury (Dragon’s tale), and one big fat American wedding (Iron Hill/Michaux Maximus/Douthat). And so here I was in mid May, with no racing under my belt, staring down the barrel of my first 100 miler on what was shaping up to be one of the Spring’s worst weather days…oh joy.

Late in 2012, when I was planning out my season, I decided I’d cross two significant events off my Fuckit list ( A Fuckit list is a lot like a bucket list only much more off handed, as in "Oh fuck it, why not?"): A mountain bike stage race, and an NUE hundred miler. I’d decided to take on the Trans-Sylvania Epic in PA as a Duo Team with my friend Rob Campbell, and the Wildcat 100 solo in the company of my Eleven Madison Park/Bicycle Tech Racing team mates. The latter fell just 2 weeks before the former on the calendar, so the plan was to train right up through Wildcat, and then rest/taper for TSEpic. But as chaos theory will tell us, there are almost too many variables for things to ever go exactly according to plan. Without getting into too much detail, my training for TSE was going great until I crashed in on a training ride, suffering a patellar contusion (fancy name for a bruised knee). This kept me off the bike completely for almost 3 weeks, and while I lost remarkably little fitness , I didn’t gain any either…at a critical time when I should have been making key improvements necessary to be competitive in such a grand an undertaking as a 7 day stage race. Trust me when I tell you, I’ve never felt less like myself than I did during these weeks. It was miserable not being able to ride; I was depressed and I felt like a stranger in my own skin. Not fun. Meanwhile Rob had gotten very fast, and for a Duo team to work, and not to be an exercise in frustration, both parties need to be at least close in fitness.  It is for primarily this reason that I decided to bow out of TSEpic and re-focus on other races.

This brings us to the Wildcat 100. With TSEpic out of the picture I began to look at Wildcat as more than just something I wanted to survive. Even though I only had a few weeks left to train, I wanted to give myself a measurable goal. Wildcat is part of the National Ultra Endurance series (NUE) and in the NUE, the Masters (old fart) category is 50 and over. Since I’m still just a kid at 46, I had to race in the OPEN category…against some of the country’s fastest endurance racers, who chase points by doing most of this nationwide series…so the goal I set for myself needed to be somewhat modest, yet lofty enough to keep me motivated. With over 100 racers registered in my class., I decide to shoot for the top 25, while telling myself that I’d be perfectly happy if I cracked the top half. After all, I was in uncharted waters here.

Fast forward to race day...it’s a total shit sandwich…one horrible rain soaked day in the middle of multiple days of gorgeous sunny spring weather. Waking up in a cheap motel room at 4:30 am to the sound of rain hitting the window is not a great motivator when doing your first hundred miler. If 5 out of my 6 team mates weren’t there to share the pain with me, I might very well have rolled over and gone back to sleep. But awaken I did and at 6:45 I was on my bike with 300 other fools in the little town of Rosendale, NY. A minute later were racing. Daniel, Kris, TJ and I tried to stay together through the slick and jagged Williams Lake single track that began only a mile into the race. Needless to say it was a total bottleneck as the whole race funneled down to a narrow ribbon of slippery roots and sharp shale. It worked for a short while until TJ lost his glasses and had to stop and grab them. Daniel, (who was doing the metric 100 (66 miles) and I remained together through the Williams, the ridge top trails behind Rosendale and up the first long road climb to the rocky goodness of the Larson loop. We were joined on the climb by a familiar face; Kirt Mills from MTBNJ. There was still quite a bit of traffic in the Larsen singletrack at this point and I figured that Kris and TJ would catch us at any moment, but to my surprise, when we popped out on the rail trail a few miles later, not only didn’t I see them but Daniel was gone too.  I sat up for bit, but they never made contact again, and when the small pack I was with started to pull away, I had no choice but to jump on with them or be stranded in no man’s land. So much for the team dynamic.

Aside from one nearly missed turn, a big climb to the top of the Mohonk ridge and some beautiful epic fog, the next 15 miles were pretty uneventful. I was in a revolving pack of riders that grew and shrank...hovering at around 7. Kirt was still with me and was riding well. I remarked to him at one point about how the rain was holding off and the conditions were actually surprisingly good. Of course, no sooner did I open my mouth that it started to rain….hard. The gravely carriage roads of Mohonk  became soaked with standing water, and even though I had put fenders on my bike for the occasion, the spray from the pack’s tires had me soaked though in no time. The small pack stayed together until the first aid station at mile 26. For the moment, the rain had abated. We stopped, re-fueled and were on our way…plunging down a long, fast 1500 vertical foot road descent on the other side of the Shawangunk ridge. This led us to the Lippman Park trails, a 10 mile loop of flowy singletrack that turned harder and more technical the higher we climbed. The conditions got worse too, as the skies opened up again and hard steady rain was falling once more. I was watching my heart rate closely; trying making sure I never pushed myself too hard, knowing that the race hadn’t really even begun yet. By the time we were done with the seemingly endless switchback descent in Lippman, the road was a welcome reprieve. What wasn’t so welcoming was the fact that we had to now ascend the massive ridge we’d just come down.

So up we went, headed back towards the aid station. My HR was running a little high so I fell back from Kirt and the pack and just rode my pace…losing a couple of football fields in the process.  By the time I reached the aid station, the pack had splintered, but Kirt was there changing into some dry clothes. I decided to wait for him…we were riding well together and the thought of heading into the last 50 miles of the race solo was pretty unappealing. The aid station was only the top of the road portion of the climb. From there the climb went on for another half hour, culminating with a steep wall at the end which had me grinding it out in my easiest gear. This brought us to beautiful Lake Awosting and the top of Minnewaska State Park. It was now raining heavily again and we were soaked through to the bone;  just in time for the massive 35mph fire road plummet to the valley below. Had it been colder this could have been miserable, but it never got below 60 so we were able to bomb the myriad switchbacks and grin with idiot glee at the bottom.

Those smiles faded quickly, as the next 20 miles were as close to Hell on Earth as I could imagine, but then my of idea of Hell involves mud and rain as opposed to smoke and ash. There were stretches of singletrack with ankle deep muck that were nearly impossible to ride when travelling in a flat strait line, let alone going up or when it got technical or twisty. There were endless sections of open fields in the apple orchards that you could ride, but it was like having fly paper stuck to your tires. My one consolation was that I was still feeling pretty strong, and while a bit mentally taxed, I never felt the urge to quit.

It seemed these orchards went on forever, and I’ve never been so happy to be riding a flat, boring rail trail as when we finally popped out on The Wallkill and headed back towards Rosendale. Of course, I could have used a little less than 10 miles of rail trail…the monotony of which gave both Kirt and me ample time to ponder the fact that we still had to repeat the Larson Singletrack, ridge trail, and the Williams Lake loop. We stopped at the final aid station in New Paltz and I had my first solid food (if a granola bar counts as solid food) of the day, and some Heed that tasted like the big toe of a cadaver*. In 4 miles we finally hit the turn into to Larsen, and climbed up to that most excellent piece of trail, making good time on it as it was still in surprisingly good shape. We bombed down the road back into Rosendale, then climbed back up to the ridge trail. It was a mud bath…as bad or worse than the orchards and almost impossible to ride. It was like completely re-learning how to steer the bike. After slogging through that torturous mile of muck, we had reached the access road to Williams Lake and came through the finish area preparing for what was certainly going to be a miserable final 3 miles…and just as I rolled through I heard people yelling that we were done. Apparently the trail conditions had gotten so bad that the organizers deemed them unsafe to ride. Though I did feel a tinge of disappointment for not being able to complete the course and the full 100 miles, don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be finished with a race as I was in that moment.

It was over. My first hundred miler was in the books. I congratulated Kirt and thanked him for being such great company for such a brutal event. For someone who claims not to be an endurance guy, he rode one hell of a strong race. After the tedious process of changing out of my mud soaked clothes and hosing off my mud caked bike, I limped over to the finish tent get some real food (I’d eaten nothing but gels, chews and bananas during the race; a strategy that worked well, but left me famished) and check results. RogieRog and Monte were there; they had come in 20^th in open and 3^rd in Single speed respectively. Well done! Daniel had finished his metric century hours earlier and had gone home, and Kris and TJ were still out on course. Eventually Kris rolled in looking relatively fresh, and I got a text from TJ saying he was at the last aid station, barfing on the side of the trail, but that he was not giving up (he’d been battling a stomach virus all week). About an hour later he kept his promise and rolled through the finish, asking us if we were in the mood to go out and do some hill repeats. After getting the results straightened out, I learned I had finished in exactly 25^th place in the open class, in a time of 9 hours and 16 minutes. I’d met my goal…if just barely. I rode a pretty smart, if somewhat conservative race; in that I kept a close watch on my heart rate, making sure I never burned too many matches, timed my hydration and gel intake very carefully, and didn’t take any unnecessary risks on the bike. More importantly I’d learned some valuable lessons: yes, with an average heart rate of 151, I probably could have pushed harder in places, and my aid station stops could have been much faster and more efficient, which is something I will look at carefully before my next NUE (Yup, I’ve got the bug!). But more importantly, it was a reminder of just what we are capable of when we set our minds to it. I was asked a few years ago if I thought I’d ever do one of these and my reply was an emphatic “No fucking way!!!” If I can survive this, what can life throw me that I can’t overcome? It’s not always easy taking lessons learned on the bike and applying them to the rest of your life, but I’m sure as hell going to try.

Until next time, happy trails!

-G

*I stole that line from Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer"