I ventured down to Harrisonburg VA this past weekend to take part in the Shenandoah 100 miler. Shenandoah is one of the last stops of the National Ultra Endurance Series of the season, and my last NUE of the year. This race has become an annual tradition where Jackie and I take extra time around Labor Day weekend to spend with friends in Frederick, Maryland, and this year adding in seeing my brother in NJ. This year turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected.
We drove down on Thursday leaving Friday to play around in Frederick; and by play I mean go explore crazy good technical singletrack in Frederick Town Forest and Gambril State Park. The riding there is awesome, but it is all "unofficial", so exploring required. I struck out Friday for a ride and Jackie mapped a long run to get her to the trail head. An hour or so into the ride I was rolling down off of a great rock feature when I heard a sudden "hiss" from the front tire. Hmmmm, thats a going flat sound that I've never heard before. I stopped to inspect and found a nearly 2" gash in the sidewall. With the size of that rip I doubted a boot/tape anything would actually hold, so I didn't even bother and hoofed it out of the woods.
Getting back to the truck I tried a tire change with no success unable to get a good seal, so I bagged it and decided to strike off to find Jackie, she should be running up the road any moment. Well a few wrong turns and 45' of driving mountain country roads later, we met up. She'd been saying she wanted to get in a 15 mile run, just didn't expect to do it this soon! The rest of Friday was spent finding a local bike shop that carried a decent race tire with some kind of sidewall. I had a back up tire, but it was the same one I just blew through, so I'm done with riding 'brand X' tires.
Saturday we took off from Frederick mid-afternoon to head to the race venue. about an hour into the trip we started hearing something as we drove, like we were driving over rumble strip all the time. We pulled over and when we stopped we watched the radiator void all of the engine coolant on the side of the road. Rut row shaggy. We called AAA and got a tow back to Frederick. Our friends were totally awesome and let us load into their Outback and head back to the race. So instead of getting into camp at 5:00, relaxing, setting up the tent, eating an early dinner and focusing on the race, we rolled into camp at 9:45, threw everything down, and tried to grab a few precious hours of sleep before the 6:30 AM start the next morning. Quite the challenge when the single speeders were I think trying to kick the first keg of the weekend before the race even started!
Sunday morning's line up at the race came soon enough, and finally was into something that was routine and expected. Ahh, this is better. Lots of big names lined up- Bishop, Tanguay, and Kevin Carter was back on his bike after a collarbone repair. We also had a couple pro road riders in the group- Ben King from Trek Leopard and Joe Dombrowski from SKY lining up. Yeah, this might be fast.
I stayed at the front of the group knowing that 8 miles in or so we were going to hit single track. last year this was where I was really able to move up so I was hoping to do the same. I stayed in a group through the winding dirt roads, only to find out that my group was actually separated from the leaders of the race. Crap, okay lets move through the single track and make time. I did reel in some riders, but it was fast, flowy, purpose built trail that was a hoot to ride, but a difficult downhill to pass on. A group of us rolled onto the road section together. As we made our way to the next big climb, the pace was WAY to casual. 10mph on the flats in a group? I don't think so. I rode my tempo on the first riser, upping the pace a little bit. I wanted to ride just hard enough to make everyone follow, but not so hard to solo it on the roads. It worked and suddenly we were doubling our tempo. As Garth Prosser joined us he reinforced the 'how about we RACE our bikes?' mentality that had apparently left our group. We set a great tempo on the road climb into the next section of trail. At this point I was at the front of the group and was able to spring ahead on the singletrack climbs- a necessity in my mind as I knew there was a lot of technical ridgeline traversing and descending to come.
Coming out of the downhill and back onto the road I was riding solo and picking off 1 or 2 guys here and there. A small group of 4 of us formed and we rode together through Aid 2 and up the next climb towards Aid 3. At this point the race got pretty spread out and lonely, which usually happens. We also got one brief downpour on the road before our crazy steep, hard, technical singletrack climb leading to aid 4. This thing was awesome. This was what made the Shenandoah 100 an epic race. Everyone feared the long 20 mile ascent, but this thing was way steeper and more technical. Despite how hard it was I was loving it.
I blasted through the downhill, and my brake pads, on that descent into Aid 4, refueled and began the march up to the highest point on the day. I was able to fuel and hydrate consistently. I did have to stop and adjust my front caliper on the road- because of the wet conditions and long descent my front piston got pumped out too far, now on the road it was dragging, vibrating, and felt like it was going to lock up at any moment. As I stopped Kevin Carter flew by. Dang, missed that train. Climbing with him last year was a huge boost so I wish I could have done it again. I rode most of the climb with Zack Morrey of Scott Racing. After Aid 5 he faded a little bit as we summited the highest point. I caught one rider at the top who I think stopped because he wasn't sure of the where to go. Getting by him on the downhill was clutch as now I knew I needed to fly to make up time.
I reeled in one last guy before the last aid station, and once we got onto the road I could peer back and see him trying to claw his way back up. Okay, with 12 miles to go, no sense in holding back. "Just ride your tempo" wasn't going to do anything for me. I figured punch it on the climb whenever I could to hold him back, and if it worked, great, if I blew up, then I blew up. Fortunately every time I rounded a switchback I would peer back down the hill and the gap was actually growing, not shrinking, and then he was out of site. SWEET!
I rolled through the final downhill into the camp ground. There's a great roller in the lawn that I aired it out on last year; I decided to roll safely over this time. I wasn't about to crash within 100 yards of an 100 miler finish for the second time this season (stupid wet pavement). I rolled across the line in 8:05, finishing 10th place. The biggest success was that I completed all four NUE races I did this year. Never finished out of the top 10. Even though I placed better at Wilderness getting 2nd, I was much happier with this race. I had a much better time, enjoyed doing the race, and was just grinning, (maybe grimmacing at some points) from ear to ear most of the day.
So the race was successful. Even though everything seemingly fell apart leading up to it I didn't let it phase me. Just goes to show that you can't get too comfortable in your pre-race routine. If you get too wound up over something like that, you'll defeat yourself before the race even starts if things don't go your way.
Afterwards we got to spend a couple extra days in Frederick. Unfortunately my truck didn't get fixed until Wednesday. However, everything was covered under warranty, so even though we lost a couple days I wasn't out any $$ for it. We made the long drive home late Wednesday, stopping only once for a horrific traffic accident on I-84 to provide medical assistance to a driver who may or may not end up losing his arm. Scary. But Jackie and I are back home, safe and sound. Now I'm just taking the next few days to decompress from the trip, and really all the racing and traveling all season long since May.
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