Race day - Rothrock State Forest, Tussey Mountain Ridge

The big day arrived bright and early. I slept reasonably well for about eight hours albeit with a few bouts of wakefulness early in the morning due to the cold. I finally checked the time at 05:50, 10 minutes before my scheduled wake up alarm. I thought it was later because the moonlight, muffled as it was by the forest canopy, still lit up the tent.

I spent an hour and a half eating, drinking coffee and packing up. Still, I wasn’t the earliest to hit the road. A couple of campers left as I was still packing. Americans don’t hang around.

The half hour drive from the campsite to the race start was easy and the countryside in the early morning misty Sun was just beautiful.

The ride itself was probably the most difficult I’ve ever done. 20 miles of long ascents, very rocky technical ascents, a long muddy (deep, pooled water) and rocky flat section. Things went downhill fast (figuratively alas) when after an easy first half mile we started a four (f-ing four!) mile ascent. I knew this was coming but I didn’t know until we started that the organizers wanted us to ride as a group. I expected to crawl up at my normal pace but instead I felt duty bound to keep up with a group of gazelles. I managed to do so for the first couple of miles but after that I inevitable fell behind as the time-course below shows…!

I never really recovered from that and whilst I was middle of the pack on flatfish rocky sections, I was dead last on anything that resembled an ascent.

The sections below led up to the ridge and went along the ridge. There were rocks!. There were also some nice vistas across the valley but I didn’t have time to stop and take a proper picture.

For the last five miles or so I was OK if I could maintain a steady cadence but whenever I needed to push suddenly to get up a steep section or push over rocks I started to cramp. Unfortunately most of that period was rock strewn and I was dealing with cramps. At one point my quads, hamstrings and adductors all went crazy. All I could do was sit down and wait for it to pass. All of that said, finishing the 20 miles was sweet and by November I’ll have recovered.