Bad Idea Racing

I had entered the PMBAR back in February with someone I didn't know. Scott Wolfe and I never got a chance to ride together before the race and due to circumstances beyond his control our team disintegrated 24 hours before the start. He had to bail on me the day before the race and after some scrambling I had a new partner around noon on Friday. Jody Flemming and I became partners with less than 20 hours till race time. We had ridden together once in April on a really epic ride. I think we drank together at a Pisgah gathering once, but the details on that are a little hazy. Jody is a single speed 29'er riding fool with the skills to pay the bills, and most inportantly a sense of humor.

PMBAR is different from any other MTB race that I have ever entered. Eric Wever (the honcho) picks five top-secret locations in Pisgah as checkpoints and he requires you to hit at least four of them before you return to the finish. It's up to you to figure out how to get to each CP. He then hands you a passport/CP location book, and at 8:00 am he says "go". Some folks take right off and head up the only trail outta the parking lot while other racers stand there with one had on the map and a thumb in their butt. We chose the stinky thumb route. There was a two hour bonus available if you hit all five checkpoints, but Jody and I agreed that we were the kinda guys that could just settle for adequacy. I have always believed that if I just shoot for adequate I will usually end up satisfied. If I accidentally rise above adequate, well then all the better.

After staring at the map we chose the "typical route". Everybody else was going to go up Black Mountain and turn down Turkey Pen Trail. It made the most sense because if you didn't go down Turkey Pen early in the day you would be pushing up it at the end. We hit the first climb in line with the rest of the lemmings and on the first descent I noticed my rear brake sounded funny. I stopped and did the "lift the hood, look at the engine, and yes it looks like an engine" man-thing. Jody's bike was creaking like the gates of a neglected cemetary. We saw no obvious probelms so away we went.

We passed the first intersection and continued on in the same direction as everybody else. Then it came to me; why not go backwards? Certainly it would be harder, but it sounded like more fun. We would get to do a lot of the trails we like in our preferred direction and the only penalty would be the five and a half mile push over two mountains and six gaps towards the end of the day. This kind of decision is called a no-brainer because only a person with no brain would make this decision.. We turned tail and headed back down into the masses pushing up. They looked at us cluelessly as we went by. There was no logical reason to go the way we were going. Two idiots, two single speeds, and a bad idea.

After a bit of pleasantly uncomfortable riding we got to our first CP. The volunteer told us that someone had already beat us there using a different route?? (I saw the team that beat us to our first CP finish the race well after dark:30 Where did they go??). I couldn't figure out where they came from or where they were going. Nevermind that racing business, we had a greater goal in mind.

We rode on towards our next CP. Jody and I decided to push up Pilot Rock. It is an awesome descent and only a couple retards would push UP it. Excuse me, was someone looking for a couple retards? We hit the next checkpoint, and on our way down the mountain we saw people approaching it from the "right way". It was nice to be coming from the other way forcing the other teams to decipher just what cryptic path of destruction we were up to. They might have been thinking we were actually trying to win. Pfftttt.

I realized that my rear brake just wasn't really doing anything more than making noise so I decided to actually look at it. DOH! I had no pad material left on one side and I was grinding the backing plate against the rotor. Good thing I brought back-up pads. I unpacked the new pads, misplaced, searched for, found, and then installed them.

We rode off the trail and on to some endless fireroad to the bottom of Trace Ridge. We were going to climb 2.5 miles of singletrack to bag CP#3 and then come right back down. We were in a good groove when we rolled in and we were looking at one to go. While I was taking off my knee warmers Jody located the source of his creaking. His frame was seperating behind the head tube. Our day was over, or so I thought. I figured I would bail out with Jody, but he encouraged me to finish our route so we could see how we would have finished. He was going to head to the nearest pavement and ride back to the keg, I mean finish. Ironically just hours before that moment I was telling Jody how I had never ridden alone in Pisgah. We went with the new plan, and I was going to get my first solo ride in Pisgah.

From our point of seperation I descended Trace Ridge, and did a mess of fireroad climbing. At the top of the fireroad I took a left and descended into hell. I was going to one of the lowest parts of the forest and (for me) the hardest to navigate. I had to get out my map at every intersection to be sure I was on the right track (I found out later I could have taken a trail that meandered along a creek, but I took a trail that had two significant climbs). Topgraphic schmopographic.

I had to decide if I wanted to snag the last checkpoint. I would have to descend down to a swamp just to turn around and go back up the same trail to get a stamp in my passport that would count for nothing. Well, I had pushed a bad idea this far so why not. Matt Johnson (owner of Bio Wheels) was kind enough to give me a stamp even without my partner so I got my (our) last CP.

After climbing out from the final CP I made it to Turkey Pen Trail. It was the final gauntlet of the day. After I get this trail behind me everything would be gravy, but first five and a half miles, mostly up, and all hard. I would never see anybody out on the trail as most people would have came down this way in the first hours of the race. The race was now something like eight hours old and I was mentally defeated. I was going to be moving along at a snail's pace for a big fat DNF. That's not even the least bit motivating. I pushed so slow that I was passed by an inch worm yelling "On your left!". I tried counting the six gaps on the trail, but I couldn't really determine what exactly a gap was so I gave up around number thirty-two. After what seemed like some sort of eternity I came to the Black Mountain Trail, more importantly known as the trail back to the finish.

A fast descent, one last hike-a-bike, and a hurrah downhill later I crossed the line. I (we) would have been in around 10th place if I (we) counted. After I left Jody at mile 37 I went 29 miles alone. To Jody's credit he did about 18 miles of gravel road and highway to earn his beer. It was the most effort I ever put into not finishing a race.