Shenandoah 100

So, as you can probably tell from my lack of significant postings in the last few weeks, school has started. Which means I have work. Which means I don't have time to sit around on the interwebz. Yet here I am. Anwyay...

Labor Day weekend found me headed south of good ol' Carlizle and into the mountains of George Washington National Forest in Stokesville, VA. Yes, the Shenandoah Mountain 100, the final major race of my 08 season. I was super excited because I had heard so many good things about this race. Long, hard climbs, then miles and miles of sweet singletrack descent. Well let me tell you, it lived up to it's expectations. The race started at 6:30 and a mass of humanity on bikes (450 people !!!!) left the camp and bottlenecked their way down the road. I tried to line up behind the fast guys, but forgot that the start went to the right and not straight out of the campground. Plan foiled. Found myself somewhere in the middle. Rode the first climb with some Henry's guys and a C3-solay guy that I regularly race against in MASS XC races We picked a lot of people off on the climb. Then I was met with the inability of anyone from PA, or the area where the trails are found, to ride technical singletrack. the first singletrack had a few short technical uphills and there was a line walking up each one of them. It was a sad day. Once I got past the walkers, I flew down the ensueing descent catching and passing more riders. What a good feeling that is.

Sunday Morning roll out 6:30AM

After that there was more climbing on the road, as well as some more sweet singletrack, including a long singletrack climb that I walked up because there was a huge line of people walking up it. After Aid #2, I headed up the hardest climb of the day Dowell's Draft. To put Dowell's in perspective: it is far from the longest climb of the course, and it is not the steepest either. What makes it hard is the fact that there are 4 or 5 false summits, and the road gets steeper after each one. It was a mentally and physically demoralizing climb, and I ended up walking some of it. I can honestly say that it was the only time I have wished to have that 22t granny ring on my bike. But, the pain was all forgiven on the descent. A 6 mile technical bench cut singletrack raceway where pushing speeds of insanity was not uncommon even for me. I latched onto two other riders and we absolutly flew down, passing numerous large groups of people who promptly moved when they turned and saw our lightning-quick approach.

The next section passed without event, another climb, this time up some cool singletrack whose beginning was marked by a super steep (read: unridable) rocky stair case section. And yet things kept getting better. The descent into Aid 4 was absolute magic. I didn't think the descents could get any better, but they did. This one was long, smooth, fast, and flowy. I caught and dropped (like it was my job) the C3-solay guy. I dropped all the people I had ridden the climb with. After Aid #4 was the big climb of the day. And I do actually mean big. it was 18mi uphill to Aid #5, then another 6mi to the top of the climb. Big. I latched onto a group of 2 other guys and we pace-lined up the early slopes of the climb. Then I set out on my own in the ultimate test of survival. I had never spend 2hrs climbing before so I had no idea how it would be. It was long, and mentally draining.

The rest of the race went as planned, and I picked up the pace after Aid #6 for the last 13mi to the finish, which by the way included climbing 1/3 of the way back up Dowell's. Final finishing time was 11:13, which is in the range of what I expected to get. It was probably the most fun race I have ever done. Yeah for fun races. Yeah for long singletrack descents. Yeah for bikes.

And done...