"No bridges on some trail... trees down... construction... insert something somewhere..."
"All racers must start and finish on (whatever that road is named or numbered) and Black Mountain to/from the start/finish."
Good enough. Fight the 8:00:01 scrum, get our passport, shove our bikes out and get riding. We're first place... for now. Then the unavoidable passes as we make room for the "athletes" and the single speed teams that I anticipate will beat our dicks off unless they make a really bad decision. Eventually we're walking long enough to look at the passport for at least a vague concept of the checkpoints, rules, off limits... surprises. Rumors abounded the day before at various watering holes and campsites. I've got a grasp of the locations, but I'm gonna need to drill down when we get up to Hot Dog Gap to check the passport for fine print.
Three of the five checkpoints are no out-and-back, one of them being the one mandatory with three ways in/out, and the other two sitting at a four way intersection. The good news is that I know the intersections very well, and the two that sit alongside a trail are both checkpoints that I'd previously and regrettable miscalculated for in the past, so much so that they are deeply scarred into the folds of my gray matter.
Watts loves when I give him, "the good news is..." almost as much as he likes "the bad news is..." "the strange thing is..." "the funny thing is..." and "the really fucked up thing is..."
I know we'll be at our first checkpoint in about two hours because I've gone there the wrong way before and taken two and a half hours to get to that side of the Pisgah Butthole, and these are the things that stick with me (and haunt my dreams). We roll into the back of single speeders Montucky and his partner Montchucky right before the checkpoint looking at a map, and they roll into the site with us.
"You're the first single speeders here..."
Hooray or mebbe not?
It means everything and nothing. There are two fast teams that were ahead of us, so someone chose poorly or something. Who knows until you know, but even when you know, you don't.
Rolling out of the first checkpoint with the Montchuckleses in front of us, I know Watts doesn't want to "race" and neither do I. We reverse attack and start slow rolling the flats on South Mills River... and they slow down too. Poop. I'm assuming they want to use us to make the route. When we get closer to the next turn and the following hike-a-bike up Horse Cove, I start stomping with intent. I want to get through and on to the next one before they can follow along. It works but...
Here comes strong men SS'ers Chris and Eric right up our butts. They said something about a missed turn on the way to Turkey Pen, and before they can get out of sight POP SLAM BANG OOOF.
Chris's tree trunk legs snapped his chain and sent his leg elbow into the stem. Great. I can't wait for them to rally back from another setback and pass us again later... like they end up doing on the way to our third checkpoint.
It's the only real out-and-back we're gonna see, so when we get down there, it's a single speed reunion with two (or three?). Arrghh. This is too similar to "racing." We came back down the mountain, and at about thirty miles in, I think the wheels on the Watts bus didn't fall off completely but mebbe lost a few lug nuts. I did my best to give him "the good news is..." but it's hard to downplay the fact that even if it's mostly gravel and pavement to the finish with only one gnarly descent left, we're probably not even halfway home (we're definitely not halfway home).
I slow down and do the "do you want some gummy bears or do you need a gel or is there anything I can do?" but we've both been in the same situation in the past, and being left alone with our personal demons is about the best you can do. I member Watts trying to "there, there, Little Bear" me through some dark moments in past PMBARs, specifically PMBAR From Hell '21.
The sky starts to drizzle and we get around the tech-gnar of Daniel's Ridge to scoop our fourth check point... and there's beer and pizza at the trailhead parking lot? Very nice. The vittles mighta put a little pep in Watts's step, but the unavoidable reality is always there, and the only carrot I can dangle is that this will be a quick (in PMBAR terms) loop, and then we'll be back at the pizza and beer in about an hour of primarily double track and gravel with mebbe an hour and a half and one big climb to go after that?
It sounds as stupid as it is.
Nary a complaint came from him, nor any mention of quitting even tho he knows full well that when we turn left for the final climb of the day, we're only a mile from a quick DNF and beers and burritos and showers...
One minute, one hour... what's the difference?
We made the loop in decent time and came into the finish after 9:23 saddle time in third place single speed, eleventh overall, once again falling ass-backwards onto the lower steps.
Another year of telling myself it's my last PMBAR for the first few hours, to mebbe thinking I got a couple more left in me on the way back up Hot Dog Gap towards the finish, to most definitely coming back next year while hanging out for hours after the finish until the last cow comes home.
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3 comments:
Buckle up, Buttercup!
I recall ORAMM being a big event for you BITD, what happened that you no longer do that? Thinking about doing it again this year but at age 69 not so sure I want to deal with the pain.
I actually had huge goals for that race the last time I did it, 1st SS, top ten overall finish (got 9th), and sub-5:30. I managed to hit all the marks, and still racing on a rigid fork. I felt like it was as perfect as it gets (for me), and it just won't get better than that. I called it my last in my blog post in July '13, and it's one of the few promises I've ever made to myself and kept.
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