Two Wheel Blogs

It's hard to believe that all the anticipation, excitement, and nervousness of my first "big" race of the year is now over. Another race under the belt, one that will find it's way onto my calendar for many years to come. I trained, well, I wanted to train... Usually I was left to the road due to wet trails, but that's just been the way its been. The 2008 Ouachita Challenge Sunday was the longest mountain bike ride I've done this year. It was all good though, I was fresh, and thank god because if I had a repeat performance of last weeks 6 hour race, I would be in for a long day.

Last weekend I DNF'd the Spoke Pony race. I took the week off for the most part. I did a few easy rides, and a ride for about and hour and fifteen on Saturday. I rode the Womble Trail and had a great time. I rode part of the race loop we would do the day after. My legs felt good, and I keep it easy as to not take too much of of the tank.

I will say the hospitality I experienced this weekend was second to none. I stayed in the Oden High School gym with about 15 other races. Most everyone brought air mattresses so it was alot cheaper than renting a hotel. I was stupid and didn't bring my blow up bed, but luckily the school principle, who was sleeping there with us, had an extra. He let me borrow it, which left me with a great night of sleep the night before the race. He was a super cool dude, I would have loved him as my principle. We watched Kansas merk UNC on Saturday night. Oh well, rock shock jayhawks...

I woke at 6:30 Sunday morning, wishing they didn't have to make the start so damn early. We were to start at 8 in the morning, about 4 hours too early for me. I guess considering some people would be out for 7 hours plus it was best, but still it took some time, and lots of breakfast to get me up and going. The 80 miler riders took off, and 15 minutes later we lined up. I hit mid pack, I didn't want to get stuck behind a hundred riders once we hit the single track. The first 20 mile or so of the race were on the Womble Trail. It was a more buffed, fast, flowy trail so I knew I'd be holding some speed. After 30 minutes of banging it out on pavement and gravel we finally hit trail. We rolled out at a pretty good pace, and the hum of 200 riders on the pavement with fatties was intoxicating. I bounced in and out of groups and once we hit single track I passed a few, and grab a group were we settled in for a nice pace. We would catch a few and drop them, and then one would fall from the group. That's pretty much how the whole day went, the end got more spread out but you were constantly passing one or two, and then getting passed once in a while. The Womble was one of the coolest trails I've got to rail. Flying down bench cut trail on the side of these huge hills was exciting. I got flying on the downhills, but always was held up due to slower riders by the end.

That was my biggest strength yesterday. I was climbing pretty good too until the last 15 miles or so. We ended the Womble, and hit about 4 miles of pavement and to the Ouachita trail... I stopped at the first aid station, and filled up one of my waterbottles, and downed some gel. This was the first race where I got to experience aid station. The gals that worked these things were awesome! They would take my muddle bottles and fill them up while I ripped out my heed from my camleback. They'd hold the bottle while I put the heed in, and then put the cap back on and give it to me right as I would jet off. They cut my stops down in half easy. So I passed a rider on a SS on the pavement, and then ended up catching John Langworthy, a Red Wheel racer, as he was stripping off his arm warmers and tights. See it was chilly when we started. Perfect, cloudy and cool. I opted to race with baggies for the first time, and only wore my short sleeve jersey. I was one of just a few to start out without long sleeves and pants. But that just ment I didn't have to stop to take mine off.

So John and I rode together all until we hit the Ouachita trail. I stuck behind him for a mile or so, and somehow ended up taking off to the front and leaving him. This was around hour 3. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. We climbed, we decended, we climbed, we decended. It was fine for a while. I was riding strong, feeling good, and ready for more. Then we hit Blowout Mountain. I got more, a whole lot more. We climbed for over 20 minutes. When I say climbed, it was a even mixture of riding/walking. It would get steep and rocky and I would have to walk. I didn't feel too bad walking, everyone else was too. One the straights and downhills I stayed strong. But once we hit a steep climb I would top out fast, and my heartrate would jump. On that note, I felt great health wise this race. My HR was normal, high towards the end when it got hot and sunny, and the hills worked you like a little girl. But that's just normal, these hills/mountains were foreign to me. I expected to be winded and worked.

The rock gardens were great, some so bad you had to port across them. The downhills were tits, I hit 30 mph on some. The Monkey ate the trail up, and spit it out at blazing speeds. On the way down from Blowout Mountain was the only place where I feel I was getting knocked around like a ragdoll. It was ridiculous. I told the folks at the following gravel road crossing that if anyone emerged with a head, to give it back to me at the end. I almost lost it...

I guess I got lucky this year, they cut out about 10 miles of the race. Apparently the Fiddlers creek crossing was way to high. I took it a bit harder in the beggining knowing it was going to be shorter, and by the end I had given it my all. We hit the gravel road with 8 miles to go and I gave it my all just to hold on. I got passed by a fellow and shortly after experienced the most horrific cramp ever to cripple my tall lanky statue. I wanted to scream. I slammed on the brakes, and fell over due to the fact I couldn't move my legs. They seized up completly and for the next minute or two I layed on the side of the road in pure agony. I got up and rode it off, luckily not to return. I did have a cramp in my left calf about 10 miles earlier. Could have been the 2 + miles of hiking we did. I rode as strong as I could, but lost 3 places total on the gravel and road back to the finish. They all were on 3X9's so they were able to go a bit faster than my 1X9.

50 miles from the start, 5 hours and twenty minutes later, and I was finished with my first Ouachita Challenge. I rode hard to the finish, beating Robert from DRJ Racing by a minute or two. We rode together for a bit during the morning. He was a strong rider, and cool to ride with. I finished pretty well considering the lack of preperation I had in this race. 35th out of 200. My only goal was to break top 50 so I did what I came to do. I was also able to hold of John for about 20 minutes difference at the end. This will probably be the only time where I can say I bet him. He rode strong.

Looking back on it all there's not enough words to sum it all up. It's something you really have to experience yourself. It's that sense of accomplishment, that feeling that you did something that most people will never have the chance to experience. Everyone was exhuasted, and we were all glad it was over. Memories where made yesterday, and pain was brought. The first place rider in the 80, or 70 actually, race finished just about 15 to 20 minutes later than I did. Nuts. He was a Trek Factory racer I guess. He fly. Nick Smith, Andy N, Barry V, Cary, Guy, Pete, and Chris represented Red Wheel. I'm not sure how everyone else did except for John. I passed Cary and Guy when Cary broke his chain. I never saw any of the others, Barry did the 80 miler too. There were some KC racer, COMO racers, STL races and racers from all over the midwest.

So I'm tired of writing, I wanted to sum up my 2008 Ouachita Challenge results in one post... I'm sure I'll remember other things to ramble about later down the road. Here are some pics, the camp ground is from Friday night down at Roaring River State park. I went down there to do some trout fishing and camping before heading down to Oden. The others are from the Womble Trail on Saturday.

BTW, I named this race the Max E Mueller Memorial Race... You see about 6 months ago my black lab of 14 years was ran over. His name was Raider, he was a great dog that I spent countless Summers running around our farm with. He was ran over, but his time was coming soon enough, he had a long hard life. So we bought Max a few months later, and my little sis decided his name to be Max E Mueller. Sadly our little Max was too run over, a week ago Sunday. A short week later and I left it all out on the mountains in his memory. The little shit will be missed, so young was he to die. RIP little dude...

">>

Photo: