Two Wheel Blogs

If you're like me, you've been missing your dirt content on this here blog. No offense, but I can handle only so much road and charts that seem to only confuse me. Today, you get a dose of dirt, a trip into another painfest they call the Berry Man Epic, or BT Epic for short. The boys from Springfield put on one hell of a race last weekend, and being it was the first time for this race, I don't think they could have done any better.

I headed down to Steelville Saturday morning to set up camp and get a little pre-ride in before the big race on Sunday. The drive was amazing, the trees are just now turning, and it was a beautiful sunny day. I arrived at the Bass Resort and checked in to site 405. Ten minutes later and I had the tent spread out ready to pop up. Well I almost got it popped up but seems that I left the tent poles at home. I must have been real tired last time camping not to put them back in the bag. Therefor my new tent for the night was the back of my Jeep.

No biggie, I cleaned out the car, threw all the shit in the front seat and headed out for a ride. The ride was nice. I started with the 2.4 mile climb up to the singletrack. Hit the singletrack for awhile and then bombed down back to camp.

The had the swag giveaway on Saturday night, along with some mouth watering BBQ and with the beverage of your choice. Mine was the good ol Keyston Light. Had to go with light since we actually had to race the next day. They had hella things to give away too, along of which included, 3 Redline 29er's, a Garmin GPS, like 10 pumps, tons of sunglasses, a full bore Park Tool Kit, a Park Tool Stand, and all kinds of other goodies. I felt it, I was sending out postive vibes, I WAS going to win something. Or not, like the story of my life I didn't win shit. I don't get lucky, just doesn't happen. Either way we all had a great time.

I spent the rest of the night strumming the guitar with a guy I met from Springfield, and we hung out by the fire swapping stories of past races. It was the calm before the storm. The weather was perfect, and I was as calm as could be.

I woke up at 6 30 Sunday to prepare for the painfest soon to take part. We did the pre-race meeting, and soon after we were off. I faintly remember something like "Oh sweet lord baby jesus let me make it through this without TOO much pain" going through my head.

I started out way too hard. In fact after the big climb I was sitting in like 12th once we hit the singletrack. Right behind all the big boys. That lasted for about 30 minutes before I finally convinced myself to slow down. I had a long way to go.

The singletrack was primo, super fast and full of rocks. The leaves did a good job of keeping it interesting, and I only had one mishap. I was coming into a creek when a rogue rock grabbed my front wheel and sent me hurling forward. It was one of those slow motion crashes where you just seem to hover in the air right before you land like a ton of bricks in the brush. I brushed myself off an took back off.

The fast flowy singletrack soon lead to the hillier singletrack that left you going up, then down, then up, then down, and so on. I was feeling real good. Well, real good until about mile 20. All that pushing in the beginning caught up to me. Full on leg locking cramps. The good kind too, the kind that you can't do anything about but fall off your bike and hope they go away. They eventually did and I began to hobble off. I spent the rest of the 36 miles dealing with how to not cramp. Did a pretty dang good job too.

I had to take it a little easier than normal due to the cramps. The endurolytes and Heed were helping, but if I made just the wrong pedal stroke they'd re-appear.

We started out on the Ozark trail and then hit the Berryman. I was having a blast just ripping up singletrack, and my thoughts of placing left my mind and thoughts of having fun took over. There were sections of the trail were you literally didn't have to pedal at all and yet you'd be hauling over 20 for what seemed like miles. Pump it, pull it, pump it, pull it, it had flow man, lots of flow.

There was one climb that busted my balls pretty good, it was a mile long pavement climb back up to the Berryman Campground. That hill hurt, bad. Once at top they told us we had 9 more miles of singletrack, and then a short 6 mile downhill to the finish. HELL YA! I was almost done...

I felt great for most of that nine miles, amazing actually. Everything was working, I was climbing back in my middle ring again, and I was flying. Of course like in every long endurance race, the last few miles seem to never end. We hit a huge double track climb when a guy said we where almost to the gravel road. I hit it and blew past the last checkpoint to "bomb" the downhill they said awaited.

Well the gravel road wasn't exactly downhill. More like downhill for awhile, then flat, a little climb, down a bit more, flat, climb, so on and so forth. It hurt like hell, I had nothing left, and alls I wanted to do was get back and start drinking away the pain. I pasted a singlespeeder and then got pasted by a couple of geared guys. But O at last, the finish was in sight. I took it easy seeing no one was behind me, and then at the last minute sprinted to the finish like it was a walk in the park.

I couldn't have asked for more for a season ender race. This race was one of the hardest I've had to endure, and it will be on my calendar for many years to come. Chris Ploch ended up winning with a time of 4 hours and 40 minutes. He took 1500 dollars with him home, a well deserved pot. I was 15 minutes off my goal, finishing in 5 hours and 45 minutes. Not great by any means, but I was happy given my condition during the race. Looking back I did alot of things right, and alot of things wrong. Unfortunatly the things I did wrong hurt me more than the things I did right. I didn't fuel properly, I didn't hydrate properly, and I should of paced myself better. I think I got 5th in my age group, 23 out of about a 100. Brad Huff, racing for Jelly Belly, took 2nd and 1st in my age group.

Next year the promoter is promising a 10,000 dollar total payout if he fills the race. That's 150 tour riders and a 150 racers. That's crazy yo. I see the endurance scene popping off in the coming years. With higher payouts, and awesome venues, everyone's loving it. I'm addicted to the pain. An estatic exhuastion, a painfest followed by pure bliss.

So I finally got around to taking some pics of the new steed. Here she is, my brand new Stumpy. I couldn't have asked for more from this bike on Sunday. Not one problem, it performed flawlessly. It was part of the reason my riding was so on. This bike rocks, and unfortunatly she won't see much use till next year. I'm keeping her in prime shape for racing only. The KM gets the beating during training, that and singlespeeding is so much fun! Hope you enjoyed, this concludes your daily dose of dirt.