May 15th, 2004 by Phil Esempio
This is to report what was probably the singularly most miserable day of racing I have experienced in many years - the American Mountain Bike Challenge (AMBC) Rocky Mountain Classic in Nelsonville, Ohio. This racecourse, home to the Di Di Mau Classic mountain bike race in years past, is a non-technical loop through the hills around Hocking College and through some of the low-lying wetlands nearby.
Of course, being spring in Ohio, it rained for the entire 3 1/2 hour drive down there, although it let up a bit before the start. After I unloaded my bike, and fitted tires designed to handle mud to it, I rode around the parking lot to make sure the gears were functioning properly before the start. And then, during final preparations, 10 minutes before my start, I looked down to see the rear tire dead flat. I pulled off the offending wheel, put a tire lever under the bead - and it promptly broke off. After much digging through the back of my truck, I finally had to pull the levers that were stowed in my pack for the race, along with the only spare tube, and change the tire as quickly as possible. All this, while I could hear the call to the line for my age group. Finally, I get the tire back on, mount the wheel... and in my hurry to get it into the dropouts, I knocked the pads out of the rear disc brake. Now I had to take everything apart, and try to reseat to one-inch brake pads into a spring-clip, then fit them back into the caliper, all while it is pouring rain once again, and I can hear my age group leave the start line. Finally, I forced myself to stop, calm down, and slowly refit the pads, this time with success. Back on goes the wheel, put my water pack back on, and off I go to the start line - 10 minutes late.
The course itself started out across some gravel roads, then crossed over a set of wooden plank bridges. The second of these was at a 100-degree angle to the road, a hard left turn, and required swinging wide right in order to hit it straight on so that you wouldn't slip off of it. Naturally, in my impatience to make up time, I aimed straight at it I heard the marshal sitting there make some comment like, "Watch out, it's slippery"... and then I hit it, tried to turn, and the wheels kicked right out from underneath me, the bike flying off the bridge, held up from a 5-foot drop only by my one still-attached cleat. I landed hard on my hip and elbow, but the major damage was to my ego. I got up and took off again straight into a vertical climb in 3 inches of mud. Ugh.
The first mile was pretty much like this - ride uphill until the mud either robbed you all momentum, traction, or both, then run with the bike up the steepest sections, all the while hoping the mud wouldn't pull your shoes right off of your feet. Finally, after about a mile and a half, you reached the ridgeline but now the rain was falling so hard that the trail was literally a small river. Descents became episodes of playing chicken with trees, as even my disc brakes faded in the torrential downpour, and vision was limited to the next 15 feet or so. Somehow I kept the bike up on all the downhills I think not being able to see just how steep and slick they were kept me from panic braking. I was making up time passing a few of the slower riders now from the Sport group. I began to have hope but it was not to be.
Near the end of the first lap, there's a vicious downhill into a slick mud-bog spectators were standing there, anticipating the endos that would occur as front wheels buried themselves, and came to a complete stop, flinging riders over their handlebars. But I judged the mud right went through the ravine...and made a sharp left turn into - a storm drainpipe! Yes, the course went through 100 feet of corrugated 6-foot high sewer pipe, with about 6 inches of running water on the bottom of it. I entered the pipe with one of the women riders right behind me, and the only way to ride it was to maintain speed and thus stability. At the end was a pool of water, which, it turned out, was 4 feet deep. I went right in and came to a sudden stop, as the bike bottomed out in the pool. The course made a hard right out of the pipe no way to make it without dismounting, it turns out. Then run about 50 yards to a steep slick run-up to a railroad grade . cross over the tracks and then half a mile or so through a smelly mud bog. It was flat as a pancake, but required huge efforts just to keep the bike rolling through it any attempt to coast was futile, as the thick clay mud pulled you to a halt in feet. I finished the first lap having made up some time...maybe 5 minutes or so and then the rain stopped.
When a shale and clay course like this one gets soaked with hours of rain, after a certain point the ground becomes saturated, and the course rides wet, but fast. But when the rain stops, and the sun comes out, the course starts to dry, and the wet mud turns to moist clay, what riders familiar with this kind of terrain refer to as "peanut butter", because it has the color and consistency of that particular food, along with it's ability to stick to anything, anywhere. And that's exactly what happened - over the entire 4.1-mile length of the course. Not a single dry spot to be found. If it looked dry, it probably was 6 inches of peanut butter. Other riders' tire ruts stayed where they made them, and if you couldn't follow them exactly, you were stopped dead. Soon, my calves and quads were burning begging for mercy wishing for it to just stop. And in the middle of the second lap, my granny gear ceased to function at all - you could shift into it, and after about 4 or 5 pedal strokes, terminal chainsuck would set in. I was reduced to a low gear of 32 x 32, low enough to get up most of the hills but not the truly steep run-ups. And towards the end of the second lap, the rear derailleur refused to stay up in the 32, probably from excessive mud build up. I was now effectively reduced to about 10 functioning gears, out of a theoretical 27.
Somehow I ground out the last lap a pitiful pace. I had to stop twice to adjust my brake pads in - they had significantly worn down during the race, and not being able to at least scrub away some speed at the bottom of some of the steep downhills would have been very painful, to say the least.
In the end, I dragged in home in 8th place - the last finisher in my category, but with more than half of the field having given up and taking DNF's, I figured just getting there was an accomplishment in and of itself. And, the entire race was excellent practice for the upcoming Nationals at Snowshoe Mountain in June a race known for being muddy and technical.