Today was a mountain bike race outside of Dahlonega, Georgia, called the Fool's Gold 100....except that we typically just do the 50 mile version. This race is put on by some friends of ours, Eddie and Namrita O'Dea, who are accomplished, sponsored, endurance mountain bike racers, (along with a lot of assistance from my riding buddy David Muse). The race is run on forest service roads and trails in the Chattahoochee National Forest, in an area that used to be the Blue Ridge Wildlife Management Area. The 100 is actually one of the tougher hundies around, with about 50% of the course on singletrack, and over 17,000 feet of total climbing. The 100 is comprised of two laps on a 50 mile course, so the riders in the 50 get a mere 8500 feet of climbing.
We've come to this race every year its been put on, since 2007. Two years ago I did the 100 mile version, on my singlespeed bike. It was a huge accomplishment for me to finish that race, but it also just about put an end to my mountain bike racing career. After that race I started taking blood pressure meds, and I quickly got fat and lazy. I've about got the blood pressure thing figured out, but the fat and lazy part seems to have become a lifestyle.
Anyway, Sunny was determined to race the 50 yet again, so I decided that, even though I'm still about 20 pounds over my race weight, I would make this my "comeback" race. As we started training for the race, though, I realized I'm a lot slower than I had hoped. While most of my former racing peers were likely to finish the race in 5 hours or so, I would be hard-pressed to finish in under 6. So, I got the brilliant idea to just ride the race with Sunny, and help her post a personal best. That may sound like a great thing for a husband to do, but really it was just a way to avoid embarrassment. When my friends ask me how I did, I can tell them, "Oh, I just rode with Sunny" which is just an easy way of saying "You didn't beat me, cuz I wasn't really trying this time!"
It took quite a bit of convincing on my part, but Sunny finally agreed to let me hang with her rather than ride at my own pace.
For those who don't know, Sunny is a dedicated mountain bike racer and has great bike handling skills. She's just not terribly fast. She's light enough that she can climb reasonably well, although she lacks the leg strength to hang with the really fast women riders. Descending is her real problem, because she's afraid of getting hurt. I have to admit that most major mountain bike injuries occur when people lose control on a downhill, so its hard to push her to speed up, but she can be silly slow.
Nevertheless, I have always admired her dedication, enthusiasm, and sheer will to accomplish difficult goals.
Sunny has never finished Fool's Gold in under 7 hours (the best women riders have been coming in at just over 5 hours), but some major changes to this year's course seemed likely to speed things up. I challenged her to finish in 6:30, and I developed some time checks for the course that we would need to meet to accomplish that. During our training, I began to doubt she could do it. Heck, I began to doubt
I could do it.
Race day came, and we decided to drive up to Dahlonega Saturday Morning rather than spend the night up there on Friday. This meant we would not be able to send any supplies up to rest stops, or SAGS, prior to the race, but we rarely rely on those anyway. Sunny carries everything she needs in her hydration pack, and I carry all my food in my jersey pockets -- I just use the SAGS to fill my water bottles. In the past we have sent all kinds of emergency supplies up there, like extra tubes, spare gloves, spare water bottles, extra food. Anything we might lose along the way. But this time we were just going to wing it.
Before the race, we got to meet up with a lot of old friends, some of whom I haven't seen since my last race. As a local race promoter once said, "putting on these races is like having a family reunion". It was great to see all the old faces, and meet a few new ones. Mountain bikers are generally such a great group of people, with very little competitive snarkiness.
Sunny got to see some of her teammates she has been missing due to not racing much this year. Here she is with Laina just before the start:
We lined up towards the back to let all the serious racers do their thing. Here are the groups in front of us and behind us:
The horn sounded, and we were off. The race started on a few miles of paved road this year, and I'm a pretty strong road rider, so I started moving up in the field rapidly. I wanted to get a little lead on Sunny, because I knew she would catch me when the serious climbing started. I ran into one of Sunny's teammates, Brenda Morawa, and rode with her a while. When I was in shape, Brenda and I were comparable speeds. These days, I can hang with her on the rolling stuff, but I knew she would drop me on the climbs.
The first big climb of the day, up to Cooper's Gap, comes just 4 miles in; its a nearly 4 mile steady climb, up about 1300 feet in elevation. Its not terribly steep, but its a grinder that can take about 40 minutes, with no coasting. In race shape, I could climb it in about 37 minutes. In my training rides I couldn't get up in under 50. Today was a little cooler, though, and I had race adrenaline working for me, so I made it to the top in 43 minutes. Sunny passed me early and beat me to the top by a little over 1 minute. A lot of other people beat me worse than that. Sometimes I felt like I was riding backwards so many people were going by me, but I had to maintain an easy pace to save my legs for later.
After the Cooper's Gap climb, you still have 8 miles of climbing to get to the first SAG. These climbs include some descents, though, where you can recover a little. I thought I would catch Sunny on these rolling sections, but she was powering along. I got to the first SAG in just under 2 hours, which was the pace I had planned for. Along the way, I passed a dozen people who had passed me going up Cooper's Gap, but I never saw Sunny.
After that first SAG, you get a screaming descent, which goes down some 1,400 feet in just over 2 miles. I knew I would catch Sunny on this downhill, and I must have passed about 8 people, but I didn't catch Sunny until just before we hit the first bit of singletrack. We saw Namrita marshalling the turnoff, and I kinda laughed to myself since she probably thought Sunny and I had ridden in tandem the whole way, when we had really just hooked up.
The singletrack was in great condition, and I went ahead and left Sunny behind so that I could beat her to the second SAG. The second SAG was where she would add water and energy drink powder to her pack, and I wanted to be there to help her out. When I got there, I saw Brenda again because she was having serious problems with her front shifter. I had hoped we would get to the second SAG in under 3 hours, and Sunny came rolling in at 2:49 on the clock.
The Second SAG also serves as the third SAG, as it sits at the base of the Bull Mountain loop. So, it can be a mass of confusion with riders coming and going from 2 different directions, and volunteers running around everywhere. Here is what it generally looks like during a quiet moment:
With so many people running around asking for or offering various types of help, the SAGS can be kind of confusing. If you just focus on your own tasks and tune out everyone else, its not so bad. But, when you race a lot, you tend to know some of the volunteers and a lot of the other racers, so tuning everyone out can be tough. Also, never, ever ask for race information from a SAG volunteer: They generally don't know what's going on. I heard a lot of misinformation handed out at this SAG, but I was too busy to correct anyone. Dealing with SAG misinformation is just part of learning to race.
Sunny's time to the second SAG was good, but that could have meant that she rode the first half of the race too fast. I tried to communicate with her and got mostly blank stares and nonsense answers from her. Although that's a fairly normal condition for Sunny, this time it seemed worse than usual. She was getting tired. I directed her to the food table to find some sugary substances, and went about filling her hydration pack. We left the SAG after about 6 minutes. Right on time.
We went counterclockwise on Bull Mountain, meaning we first had to climb the Bare Hare trail (Funny story about that trail: It was originally called Bear Hair, because the trail builders found the hair of a bear on the trail while they were working on it. They later found out there was already another trail named Bear Hair, so they changed the name of their trail to that of a naked rabbit). Bare Hare consists of a steep old road bed climb, followed by the toughest singletrack climbs of the race. You ascend about 800 feet in just over 3 miles. Being towards the back of the race, I knew a lot of folks would be walking the steeper climbs, but I had coached Sunny up on yelling out "Rider!" to see those folks scamper out of her way.
I figured Sunny would beat me up the climb, and then I would again catch her on the descent, but instead I left her behind pretty quickly. I was a little concerned for her at that point, but I was more concerned about climbing myself. I put my head down and worked my way up the climb in under 30 minutes. I stopped at a good point between two creeks and waited for Sunny (that's where I took the picture at the top of the blog). She was only 4 or 5 people behind me, but when I asked her how she was doing, she said "Not so good." Uh oh.
Turned out she was cramping, as was I. She told me on the way home she just decided to keep pedaling easy on the descent and hope the cramps went away. They did, but she was terribly slow coming down. She finally arrived at the third SAG at the 4:30 mark for the race. I had determined earlier that 4:30 was the absolute latest we could leave the third SAG and hope to make it home in under 6:30. Fortunately, she rolled right through without stopping.
After the third SAG, though, the trail gets much easier. While there is still some steep climbing, most of it is really short and you can see the top of it. All of those trails have been re-worked recently, so they are really fun and flowing. It was time to drop the hammer.
Now we really were riding in tandem. I would let her lead in the climbs, so I wouldn't slow her down, and then she would pull over and follow me on the descents. At one point she asked me if she could make her 6.5 hour goal, and I told it would be close. Really close. So she promised to speed up.
When we reached the Moss Creek downhill, I took back the lead so I could beat her to the final SAG. We didn't really need to stop there, but I wanted a little more water and she might need some food. She blew right by the SAG, and I had to get moving to try to catch her.
The final trail of the race is Black Branch, which used to be my least favorite mountain bike trail in the entire State. Although it started out with a screaming fun downhill, the price of admission for that fun was a ridiculous climb out that included a bunch of trench filled, eroded trails, requiring extreme balance and stamina to ride. They have totally re-worked the trail, though, and while the downhill is not as much fun, the climb out is much more reasonable. I like the trail now.
As we started the descent, we felt the first few drops of rain. Sunny said it was nice to cool things off, but I was worried we were in for a serious downpour. On the climb out of the creek bed, Sunny latched on to the rear wheel of another racer, and absolutely dropped me. They disappeared before I even knew what had happened. Then the downpour came.
As that first climb ended, I figured I needed to catch Sunny before she just totally made me a memory on the last 3 or 4 steep climbs of Black Branch. So I started pushing things on the flatter section as the downpour got worse. Of course, my front tire washed out in a turn and I went down hard. The crash wasn't so bad, but the immediate total leg cramps made me scream out in pain. The guy behind me must have thought I broke something. He came to a halt and tried to offer first aid, but I assured him it was just cramps and they would pass. It took me a minute to stand up, but a skinned knee was my only worry:
So, I started climbing out in the pouring rain, getting chain suck from a dirty chain, and wondering if I would see Sunny before the finish line. If not, she would likely spend the next year bragging that she beat me at Fool's Gold.
After Black Branch, there is about 4 miles or so of first gravel and then paved road. I got off Black Branch after a little over 6 hours of riding, put the bike in the big ring, and started hammering. At first, my glasses got so wet and muddy that I had to take them off to see. Then the mud and water flying into my eyes convinced me to put my glasses back on.
I finally saw Sunny on the last gravel road climb. She was weaving back and forth like a snake. She was obviously spent, but there was still a chance we could meet her goal, even in the pouring rain. I caught her as we reached the paved road.
Sunny doesn't ride the road much at all, so she isn't very knowledgeable about drafting. I had spent the past week coaching her up, figuring we might be trying to sprint for the finish. If she could stay right on my rear wheel, I could pull her along for the last few miles. She hung on my wheel for the flat portions, but as soon as the road turned upward she would immediately drop back. A good teammate would circle back down the hill and give her a second chance to draft, but I was too tired for that -- I just put the bike in a small gear and waited for her to catch up.
We eventually made it back to the winery, and were confronted with the final climb of the day. Eddie and Nam decided to make us climb the steepest little pitch of road right before the finish. The two guys in front of me were walking it, but I refused to walk with that many people watching me. I slowly grunted up the hill, and looked back to see Sunny doing the same. I was pretty impressed. I had to circle around at the top of the climb a couple times to wait on her, but she made it up. My stopwatch said 6:27, so we took off for the finish line. By my watch, we made it in just under 6:29. We'll see what the final results say.
Sunny was exhausted, but really happy with her finish. I was once again amazed by her resolve. Also, I figured out later that she only stopped 1 time during the entire race, and as far as I know she never got off and walked her bike at any point. Pretty tough chick.
As for me? Oh, I just rode with Sunny.
