aka Bike Scout Camp! Photo credit: Bruce Dorman
This past weekend’s race was the 13th annual BikeMonkey New Wente 8 hour mountain bike race. Bruce and I have been racing it for the past ten years. It used to be held in Boggs Demonstration Forest, which is the same forest which burned down in the Valley Fire of 2015, devastating the local community, and burning down our rental property and all of our tenant’s belongings. To say this event has history and drama associated with it is an understatement. After the forest fire, the race continued on at a new venue, the Wente Boy Scout Camp in Willits further north in Mendocino county. This camp is on a humongous property. It centers around a huge lake for swimming, a giant dining hall and actual hot shower blocks and platform tents – and miles of all-volunteer-maintained mountain bike trails! There was camping, so it was a whole fun weekend with food and beer included.
The objective of this 8 hour race was to do as many 8 mile/1,100′ el. gain laps as you can over the eight hours with an hour buffer. So you really get 9 hours. If you do the same amount of laps as someone else, then it comes down to who did them faster. Here is what my gps track looked like, from Strava:
I am pretty amazed and surprised at how well things went up to my crash. I planned to just ride without stopping for 4 laps, take one single break to restock water and food, then do another 4. I knew I would want to front load some laps while I had it in me, so I let myself be at about my threshold wattage on the climbs in the first half.
Most mountain bike races start off at a sprint, because it’s usually a mad dash for the singletrack where there is little opportunity to pass. So even though we had eight hours (9 hours) to go, everyone was hammering to start! I immediately began to feel a little tired. I knew that was normal for me and that this type of start was not in my bag of tricks, so I didn’t worry about it. Typical of races with this format, I did end up getting behind slower descenders on the first on that first singletrack downhill meadowy section. I was also stuck in a really long conga line for the entire latter half of the loop. It was fine, it’s a long race, so I used the opportunity to reserve some energy. It was also an opportunity to show off getting some decent sized air off of a little jump lip at the bottom of a small hill. The guy behind me hooted and hollered.
For carrying everything, I opted for a hydration pack, and added Skratch hydration mix directly into the reservoir. I carried a spare bottle of plain water on the bike too as just emergency, and bike wash if it got muddy. I also had a little feed bag that was small and narrow which straps onto the top tube for food. It has enough room for 2 bars and some chews. I stored all of these unwrapped, so I can just reach in and nosh while climbing or on flat road sections. This food setup worked really well.
By the 5th lap the initial race excitement had died down, and this was my slowest, tiredest lap. I knew that I would get a second wind though, so on my 6th lap I decided to just chill a bit on the climbs, and I started to feel much better. I was also getting super hungry, and had to stop again at the aid station again to quickly restock food.
As I passed through the timing booth at the start of lap 7, the announcer called out that I was in 1st place. I was shocked! Last year, the winner of my category did 9 laps. I didn’t realize she had moved up to Pro. I was stoked thinking the fast ladies didn’t show up – cool! I was told later that my closest competitor was a seasoned road racer. But for now I was feeling hopeful! By the end of the lap, the day grew warm and I had already drained my midway water refill! So I had a 2nd unplanned stop to refill water/skratch.
Coming through the finish line at my lap 8 start, I heard I was still in first! So I just kept my pace going, enjoyed the riding, and then that downhill meadowy section came…
There was a dude who passed me leading up to it, and I was thinking oh great. He had better be faster than me on the down too. Luckily he was, and I was enjoying following him. This is where the crash came. it was after a little rise and where the trail sort of flattened out then was starting to go down again.I was feeling really good up to this moment, so I think it was over-excitement that distracted me from focusing on the trail, combined with a bit of bad luck. My front wheel just got whacked sideways all of a sudden. I think either I hit a loose rock at a weird angle, or got a little off line and washed out on the softer down side of the trail. I went down hard sandwiched between my top tube and handlebar and felt immediate pain in the quad.
My initial thought was, oh no, not again. I’m going to be limping at work this week and I’m going to have to explain this to all of my coworkers. Luckily the next rider, super nice of him, stopped to check on me, and I asked him to just tell the next course marshall that someone went down but I’d probably be fine. I decided that I had a window before the swelling happened, so I got riding again, and noticed my front derailleur was not shifting out of the big ring. My shifter/brake lever were askew, so I stopped a few minutes to fix it. When the trail went up again, I could only pedal lightly and my wattage had gone down significantly due to the pain. This is where I saw the 2nd place gal pass me (damn!).
The rest of the ride was ridiculously slow, and I pulled over quite a bit for people, slowing it even more. I finally got through that finish line and miraculously heard the announcer say that I came in 2nd place!
I went to the medic tent to tend to my bloody arm, and they advised me to go clean it at the sink since they were low on water. So I limped up the stairs and started the painful process of getting the dirt out of my scrape. I felt really lightheaded, like I was going to faint. So I sat down. Luckily the medic had made his way up to where I was with bandages and explained that I needed to lie down. So there I was, waiting for podium ceremony, lying down in front of the bathrooms trying not to faint with a medic wrapping bandages on my arm and leg.
I eventually had enough blood in my brain that I could hobble up onto the podium when it was our turn. The new winner got up there stiffly and exclaimed that she just had a slight cramp. Cue world’s tiniest violin 🙂
No seriously though, congrats to Kim Wik, the winner and Linda Munk, in 3rd place! We all did eight laps! Life only gets better after 40. We rock. Here are the results, ours are on page 24.
