June 12th, 2004 by Phil Esempio
2004 is the first year of new format for the NORBA Nationals Mountain Bike Race Series (NMBRS) - formerly known as the National Championship Series (NCS) - now under the new management of Team Big Bear. In the past, the NORBA national champion at each level was determined through a 5 to 7 race series, making it difficult for regional racers at the Beginner, Sport, and Expert levels to be competitive if they didn't live out West, where the majority of the races were held. For 2004 and onward, however, each of the eight NMBRS races will serve as qualifiers for a new single-race National Championship to be held at Mammoth Mountain, CA, at the end of September. There will still be a series championship awarded for the Pro, Semi-pro, and Expert level competitors, but this will not be the official National Championship. Under this new format, the top-5 finishers in any NMBRS (or AMBC) race will qualify for the National Championship race, along with the top-10 finishers in any sanctioned State or Regional Championship race. And, as in road racing, national champions will be determined for Masters racers in each of 5-year age increments.
All of this, of course, makes the NMBRS races that much more important for the regional Sport (approx. equivalent to Cat 3 or 4) Masters competitors like myself. For Ohio racers, this meant only 3 qualifying races were reasonably close enough to do - the Rocky Mountain Classic AMBC race, run on May 15th in Nelsonville, OH; the Snowshoe NMBRS race, held on June 12th; and the Big Valley Race in Peninsula on August 29th, now officially sanctioned as a State Championship race. The level of competition could be expected to turn up a notch, and the promoters responded to this by turning up the difficulty a notch - effectively doubling the length of the race compared to last year. The course was shortened from 9.75 miles to 8.5 miles, but the lap count for Sport racers was increased from 1 to 2, and the shortened course had a much higher percentage of technical singletrack than the longer 2003 course.
This shouldn't have posed a problem - I felt last year's course was a bit on the short side for a high-level race - except for one small problem: it rained nearly 2 inches on the eve of the race. As the Beginner and Sport races were to be run at 8 AM on Saturday, there was simply no time for the course to dry up. Thus, a course which normally would be a very nice mix of highly technical single track, fire road descents, and a lung-bursting, leg-shattering 2.5 mile long climb to the finish, became instead a cross-country runner's dream - of the 5 miles of singletrack (out of a total of 8.5 miles), less than 3 miles could actually be ridden. The course wasn't as much muddy as it was greasy; the top layer of soil refused any attempts at sustained traction, and the famous Snowshoe roots and rocks became what East Coast mountain bikers refer to as "mud snakes" and "eastern slickrock". Short drop-offs became a game of Russian roulette - was there or wasn't there enough traction to slow down and make the turn before you clobbered that tree at the bottom? Riders not running disc brakes (fortunately I made the switch over the winter to discs) found themselves digging the loamy soil from around the brakes multiple times per lap, as eventually it caked up so much that the rear wheel ceased to turn. I saw one Masters rider go flying down a hill past me, his broken chain trailing behind him. And I passed numerous riders carrying fatally wounded bikes to towards the finish line.
I felt exceptionally well prepared for this kind of race in all areas except one: off-road training time. The rainy spring has closed many of the trails I typically train on for this type of race, and as a result I went into it with rusty technical skills. My bike was perfectly set up for the course, with disc brakes, narrow 1.7" mud-specific tires, and even a stainless steel chain - this very course had virtually destroyed a brand-new nickel-plated SRAM chain the prior year in a single lap - but the challenging nature of the course caught me completely unprepared. It also didn't help that I had altered the handling of the bike 4 weeks prior by switching out the riser handlebar for a narrower flat bar with bar-ends, quickening the steering and putting more weight over the front wheel, and had spent exactly one race (the previously reported AMBC Rocky Mountain Classic mudfest) riding the bike in this new configuration. Yet another problem was altitude - the entire race was held at 4400 to over 4800 feet above sea level, and it would show in an increased heart rate and respiration rate, especially on the climbs.
From the gun, we rode up a grassy hill, down a doubletrack jeep trail, and made a corkscrewing left turn down into the first of three major sections of singletrack. The beatings started immediately, as the trail ran straight for about 100 yards, then took a short step to the left, and about 5 feet straight up - with a tree in the middle of the upslope, with it's wet roots spreading across the trail. Nothing to do but get off and hike-a-bike it past the tree. It went on like this for about a mile, followed by a short respite down a fire road, and then about 2 more miles of the same singletrack abuse. At this point I was totally mud covered, and I'd fallen a number of times, once into a two-foot deep pool of ice-cold water when my tire skidded off of a log corduroy built next to a swollen mountain stream. The water simply took my breath away, it was that cold. But it also awoke something in me - I knew I was far behind, but with 12 miles to go, I had plenty of time to catch up. And as the sun rose higher, burning off the morning fog, the course started to dry up some.
I finished the second section of single track, focusing hard on picking my lines, and making sure to keep my heart rate in the proper range so as not to lose concentration. Up through the first feed zone, I started to feel a bit better. The third section of singletrack was tough, but instead of trying to race through it, I worked on maintaining speed and staying on the bike whenever possible. My bike handling skills were coming back, slowly but surely. About this time, my granny gear ceased to function - under any kind of load, the chain would simply suck up in between the chainstay and the crank, and jam there. I would later find a partially twisted link in the chain - the second one to fall victim to this brutal course! - but in the interim I was reduced to a low gear of 32x32 for the long uphill grind back to the start/finish.
And it was here, on the long finishing climb, that all the hard road work began to pay off. Without my granny, I was forced to turn bigger gears and found that I could do so without blowing myself up. The climb was a double-track jeep trail, with a steady, brutal 10 to 12 percent grade, for nearly two miles, followed by a short section of singletrack descent, and then another half mile ascent through the second feed zone and into the start/finish area. Churning upwards at a steady 70 to 80 rpm, I started to catch and pass some back-markers. I didn't think I could catch the leaders, but certainly I could move up in the standings.
The second lap went much better for me, as I turned it nearly 20 minutes faster than the first one. The course was a bit drier, but also I knew when to get off and run, and when I could ride straight through. I was battling a few riders for position in the singletrack, and this also helped keep my pace up. When I hit the base of the climb just after mile 14, I let it all hang out. Turning a 32x24 or 32x21 most of the way up, I passed one rider after another. I wasn't sure who was in my class and who wasn't, as the class numbers they marked on our calves at the start line were all covered in mud, and not visible, but I knew I was making up ground. I knew that I would pay a high price later - I could feel the burn of lactic acid building in my legs.
The short descent before the final climb was tricky, and especially so since I needed as much momentum as possible to be able to carry up to the top in my middle ring. I flew through the rock gardens at over 20 mph in the big ring- the bike bucking like crazy under me, but holding the line I aimed for - then hammered out of the saddle for the final 1 km climb to the top. I got one more rider in the feed zone, and was still pedaling strongly when I crossed through the finish gate. My legs proceeded to cramp up almost immediately; this despite drinking nearly a gallon of water during the race. I would spend most of the rest of the weekend hydrating, and it would not be until Tuesday morning that my legs felt back to normal.
As I sat on the grass recovering, trying to get the strength to stand again, the results were posted. I found out that I finished in 6th place - just one place short of qualification for the National Championship race. While this was disappointing, I was pleased with the result otherwise - last year at this very race, I had finished 13th, on a shorter course, with less competition. So I chalked it up as progress - with two months left until my last chance to qualify this year, I feel that I've still got a decent shot at it, and plenty of time to train properly for it.