After the Dust Settles

The Stats:

• 97 Miles
• 10,500' of climbing
• 1st-Place Singlespeed, 14th Overall
• 8:42:39 to the finish

Bend, Oregon is one of my favorite places to ride and the High Cascades 100 is one of my favorite races on the planet.  The trails are phenomenal, the course is well-marked, there are an enormous number of enthusiastic volunteers, and with almost 350 racers (including 30 singlespeeders!) it's as much an endurance festival as it is a race.

The course is one big 100-mile loop, which makes it even more amazing that this event runs so smoothly.

It hurt this year, and was phenomenally fun.  Sometimes simultaneously.  Not my greatest day in the saddle, but not my worst either.  Slightly longer course/more elevation gain/hotter weather...  Maybe I was just feeling wimpy.  Whatever it was that was a tough day on the bike!

Race director Mike changed the course a bit for the 2013 edition, adding some lovely higher elevation mileage on the Metolius-Windigo Trail through Happy Valley (which unfortunately was my time to suffer.)  My 34x19 gearing really hurt on the bigger climbs, but it was spot-on for the fast, rolling singletrack that makes up most of the race.

But, first things first.   Conditions were DUSTY around Bend!  Rutted corners were deep and powdery and the sand on the two-track stretches was deep enough to result in a skreetching halt if I lost the firm strip in the center.

We rolled out at dawn on a brief neutral start behind Mike's truck (after a few misfires of the starter's pistol), and Barry Wicks set a gentle pace on the 5-mile asphalt spin to our entrance to the dirt.  Perhaps too gentle--when we hit the dirt the pack was so huge that it was chaos, riding blind through the dust cloud kicked up by the herd of panicked cyclists.  Like skiing in a whiteout, I just kept pedaling and hoping that my bike stayed on the trail and didn't hit a rock.

Loving that early-morning light on Funner.
Photo: Oregon Velo

And then things spread out and became quiet.  I had only one other rider near me on the Larsen and Funner trails (some of the most fantastic, winding singletrack I've ever found.)  That was my favorite part of the race--flowing through the forest with early-morning shafts of sunlight piercing the thin cloud of dust in the air.  Lovely.

Then somewhere around mile 40 I started sputtering.  It's a shame because the riding on the Metolius-Windigo between miles 40 and 60 was rad--high-elevation singletrack through alpine meadows and forest with creek-crossings, great climbs and bombing descents.  My body just wasn't having it.  I mean, my legs kept turning but only with serious coaxing.  (My heart-rate monitor also crapped out around mile 45, so I spent the rest of the race "experimenting" with riding-by-feel.)  The climbs hurt bad, and then hurt worse.  Dark times.

Toughing it out on the Met-Win.  Oof.
Photo: Oregon Velo

Descending felt better, of course, and it felt really good to bomb down to the Dutchman's Aid station from the high point of the race.  I swapped out Camelbaks and a very energetic, friendly volunteer lubed my chain before giving me a push out onto the highway.  A short stretch of pavement on the Cascade Lakes Highway gave me an opportunity to drink some, stretch out my upper-body, and get my head back in the game for the rough, fun singletrack down to Lava Lake.

Cruising down to the Dutchman's Aid.
Photo: Oregon Velo

And then my body felt better.  I mean, I felt like I was 60+ miles into a long damn mountain bike race, but somehow my body was back into it.  I loved the fast, rough, challenging trail through and across the Mt. Bachelor lava rock, and by the time I grabbed a water bottle at the Lava Lake Aid the racing was back to being fun.

Even the punishing heat of the late-race climbs was manageable, and those climbs flowed more quickly than last year.  The Garmin registered a bit over 100-degrees Fahrenheit in there(!), but I was carrying plenty of fluids and just kept cranking. 

Through the whole thing I really only saw maybe three other riders (all on gears) and I wasn't ever sure I was in first-place for the singlespeeders.  The neutral mass out of the start was so big and chaotic that I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, and then there was all that time riding blind in the dust cloud once we hit the dirt--I wasn't sure who I had passed or who had passed me.   I'm used to having Erica or my parents there to keep me informed on how the race is progressing, but I was racing without a support crew at this one and nobody on the course was offering up any info beyond cheering, so I just stayed on the gas and told myself I had to ride my race--it would all shake out in the end.  Focus forward.

The HC100 finishes with a HUGE descent of the Tiddlywinks and Storm King trails, complete with banked turns, rollers, tabletops, and gap-jumps, which would be mind-blowing fun with fresh legs/arms/feet.  As it was they were pretty fun but I was glad to blast out onto the pavement for the 5 miles of frantic spinning to the finish.

And in the end I made it to the top of the singlespeed podium.  One thing I've learned from racing with Jerry Pflug is that you have to stay focused and keep pushing through the whole race; there's no room to soft-pedal and space out.  (That's hard to do in an 8.5-hour event!)  Thankfully I kept it together today, stayed focused and crossed the line about 10 minutes of Joe Santos in second place.  Two first-place NUE finishes and one second so far this season--enough to keep me in contention for the series win!

On the podium with Joe Santos and Doug Andrews. Race mascot sasquatch in the background.
Photo: Oregon Velo