7/28-29/03 by Phil Esempio
This race has become legendary among endurance events: the race that started all the hoopla over 24 hour racing (back when it was the 24 Hours of Canaan). Now in it's 12th running, the event has also become a victim of it's own success - the move to Snowshoe Mountain in 2000 racheted up the difficulty a notch, to the point where in the last few years, the race has been more oriented towards running with one's bike. The main result of this was that the number of teams has sagged from a high of 550 in 2000, to only 200 this year. The promoter, Laird Knight, has not been deaf to the complaints, nor has he missed the drop in participation. As a result, the course was modified significantly this year.
The course, formerly an 11-mile loop through some of the toughest singletrack trails on the East Coast, was reduced to 7.5 miles this year, primarily via the removal of a long "hike-a-bike" section known as Enchanted Forest, and a dangerously technical downhill with the apropos name of Aheadset Adjustment. The remaining technical sections were made more rideable through the use of crushed gravel in the muddiest sections, and reduction of large boulders to small rocks through the use of brute force and sledgehammers.
The results were immediately noticable. Our Men's Veteran (35+) team, Rock Knobules East, wasrepresented by two members of SFW (myself and Matt Carson), as well Mark Herberger (an Ohio native now living in California), and Chris Mierke (a CAMBA member from Kirtland). We arrived late Thursday night on the mountain, allowing us to pre-ride the course on Friday. The early reviews were not promising, mainly owing to a foggy, rainy morning that made every tree root treacherous and and every rock slick. Even so, the trail was a marked improvement over prior years at Snowshoe. And as the afternoon wore on, the sun came out and dried the trail, so that as later riders came off the trail they reported continuously improving conditions. As a Veteran team, we would be competing against primarily Expert level racers (approximately equal to Cat II-III) and a few Sport level teams. A total of 20 teams were entered in our division, and we looked to finish somewhere in the lower half of this division.
As per 24-hour racing tradition, the race starts at noon with a Le Mans-style start, similar to that used in cyclocross. The first member of each team would run approx. 300 meters up a hill, around a ski-lift, then back down the hill to where their bikes were staged. They would then ride a prologue loop which was about 3/4 of a mile long; no other rider would do this full loop, although later riders would ride approximately 1/2 mile of the prologue. They would then enter the 7 mile long main course.
The first mile of the course was a fire road ascent of mild grade (3 or 4 percent), allowing the riders to spread out as they reached speeds of up to 20 mph. At the end of the Black Run Road climb, they would execute a hard right turn onto the trail known as Lower Beaver Dam. This is, without a doubt, the most technical section of the course.
For just over a mile and a half, riders faced roots, rocks, bridges, and sharp off-camber corners, all while trying to maintain speed. While the technical nature of the trail invited the use of one's granny gear, this was actually a middle ring trail - dropping one's speed below 8 or 9 mph resulted in too little momentum to clear the technical sections. Once you come to a halt, either by being thrown from your bike, or simply from stalling out from loss of momentum, running became your only option until a clear section of trail was reached. It simply was the only thing to do, despite the general downhill trend of the trail.
Simply surviving the Beaver Dam was enough. After being pounded by this trail, the return to doubletrack fire roads seemed welcome....until you realized that you were on the Cub Run Climb. This trail wound it's way up a ski slope at grades approaching 15 percent as you approached the start/finish area. You then passed behind the main pit areas of the pro teams (this year, only Trek/VW's pro team made an appearance) and also the campsites of teams in the Silver Creek Lodge Parking lot. Even in the dead of night, campfires were burning and cheers could be heard for riders as they approached the treacherous Power Line downhill.
There is no way to handle the Powerline but to release the brakes and hang on. The trail, no more than 4 inches wide and nearly as deep, cuts through rocks and is washed out in many places, resulting in repeated 4 to 6 inch "steps" as you descend. Apply the brakes in the wrong place, and you will fly over the bars, to the delight of the drunken onlookers. To their credit, they cheered every rider who cleared the length of this trail.
At the end of the Powerline, after crossing several man-made bridges over a muddy marsh, comes two technical trails in sucession: IMBAlicious and Slide Run. Both trails are repeats of the Lower Beaver Dam: rooty, rocky, and muddy. Yet both trails continue a gradual descent...which, at the end of Slide Run, leaves you facing the fire road of Airport Runway.
Airport Runway is the climb that breaks riders. Ascending 500 vertical feet in 2 miles (an average grade of 10 percent), the trail is nearly smooth yet reduces good riders to walking. And, at it's end, after a sharp left-hand hairpin, stands the Highwall, a short quarter-mile section that climbs an additional 150 feet at grades nearing 20 percent as it approaches a gorgeous stand of spruces.
The last mile or so is more technical trails - Bobcat Run, and The Downhill. Both trails are made the more difficult by nature of the oxygen debt one is still suffering from after Airport Runway and Highwall. The drop-in to The Downhill is tricky, and requires judicious use of ones brakes - too much, and you'll crash; too little, and you'll not make the sharp, off-camber right at the bottom. The final descent down a grassy ski-slope to the start/finish tent became quite tricky in the wee hours of the night as dew and fog made the grass quite slick.
Our team started out quite strong: Mark turned a starting lap of 1:17 (including the additional run and prologue loop), and Matt, the team captain, rattled off a 1:04. My first lap was a respectable 1:12, and Chris, a rookie to this type of racing, turned a great lap of 1:18 for his first run. We were running 12th after our first cycle of riders, well above our expectations.
However, we had discovered the downside of the shortened course: less rest time between laps. With the old course, you could usually get around 5 to 6 hours of down-time between your laps. Now, we were looking at only 3 to 4 hours; by the time you cleaned off your bike, got it ready for the next lap, and ate something, you were staring at a maximum of 2 1/2 hours of sleep. NOT good. Our second round of laps was also respectable: 1:12, 1:03, 1:15, and 1:25 for Chris on the first night lap. During Mark's second lap, it rained for about 20 minutes; not enough to muddy things, but it certainly added to the slickness of the course. Additionally, it contributed to significant fog during the night laps. Mark crashed hard on his first night lap, flying 10 feet through the air on The Downhill and s~~~!ing both knees up, while still managing to turn a 1:19; Matt turned a fast 1:16 on his first night lap, and in the fog I fell often, turning a slow 1:38. Yet we were holding 12th in the standings; while a few teams had slipped past us during the night with quick laps, a few others fell behind with some over 2 hour long laps, something we managed to avoid. Chris bettered my night lap with a 1:35, and Mark turned in a decent 1:27 on his second night lap.
Then, things started to fall apart. I drew the dawn lap at just after 6 AM in a dense fog; Matt had ripped off a 1:16 lap in the twilight, but exhaustion was setting in. I hadn't wanted to get up, and I was motivated only by the fact that when I awoke at just after 5:30, daylight was visible and I knew I could pull the lights off of the bike. I rolled out with sleep still in my eyes, and found myself slipping all over the roots as the dew and fog settled on them. I walked sections I ridden before, but the cheering at the Powerline in the foggy dawn motivated me to ride the whole thing. A slow 1:31 lap resulted, but as I rolled in I discovered I wasn't the only one to succumb to the lack of sleep: Chris was standing there in street clothes, and Mark was ready to step in a lap early. I was too tired to sleep, so checking the standings we discovered that we'd moved up a place, to 11th in class! Overall, we'd moved up to 98th out of 200 teams; we'd previously been 103rd. The end was in sight....maybe.
Mark turned a tired 1:23, and Matt stepped it up a notch and managed a 1:16 on no sleep. Rolling in at just before 10:30, he asked me if I was up for lap number 5....and I said I was. However, since none of us was capable of doing another lap, I was told not to return before noon - if I did, someone would have to go out again, otherwise we'd be considered a DNF. So, I took it easy, even stopping for a beer right before the Powerline at one of the team pits. I rolled in at 12:04, not realizing that had I stepped it up a bit, I could have placed us in the top 10 - the 10th place team came in just 50 seconds after noon! More likely though, it would have been a race to see who could have scanned in first after the noon bell, so it really didn't matter, since none of us were willing to subject ourselves to the course again. In the end, we held on to 11th in division, and 98th overall, with 18 laps. The top team, the Trek/VW Factory team, turned in an unbelievable 27 laps, with Chris Eatough rattling off laps in the 42 to 45 minute range on a regular basis. On the prologue lap, he finished with a commanding 7 minute lead, something that had to be seen to be believed.
Post race found us in our pits, drinking tall cold ones, celebrating a best ever finish for the Rock Knobules East team. And it wasn't the beers that allowed us to see the Easter Bunny, 4 Elvis, and men with bras cross the finish line!