Iron Furnace 50/25k - Wawayanda - May 5

Sven Migot

Well-Known Member
My back still hurts.

As an Allaire local, I always hear people ragging on it that its not real mountain biking. I always shrug it off and think you just aren't pedaling fast enough. This spring I headed north for the first time and raced Ringwood, Mooch and now IF. I guess I can now understand where people were coming from a bit better.

Needless to say the course was not built for me or my strengths, but I wanted to do it to see a new park and get some learning laps in. The course was awesome and I had a lot of fun, well I had fun some of the time. Looking forward to next year and will hopefully be a bit more prepared for the beating. Thanks to Black Bear Cycling for putting on a great event.
Iron Furnace was brutal & fun for sure. Always have fun at Allaire!
 

Kaleidopete

Well-Known Member
I commented that I saw a lot of trash, because I saw a lot of trash. :) It was way more than I usually saw, and a lot of it was halfway through the course in one section where it flattened out w/ fire road I assumed most people took their shot at nutrition. I'm a slow guy doing the 50k so I'm moving slowly and also after all the trash is dropped so I see it.

I joke about the triathletes, but I like to think 99% of the trash is accidental. Especially in race mode it's easy to try to put that clif bar wrapper in a jersey pocket and miss, or the trash comes out while grabbing a bar later, etc.
So my for ride this morning I thought I'd pick up some of that trash you spoke of.
I rode about 4 miles of the race trails from Laurel fire trail over to Twin Bridges and
the cross over to Red Dot and back to the start. Here is all the trash I found. That's it!
trash4.jpg

I guess I picked the wrong trails for garbage. I continued my ride on other trails and came upon a pesky tree.
I made an adjustment, so the trail work wasn't wasted.
tree43.jpg
 

Santapez

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
So my for ride this morning I thought I'd pick up some of that trash you spoke of.
I rode about 4 miles of the race trails from Laurel fire trail over to Twin Bridges and
the cross over to Red Dot and back to the start. Here is all the trash I found. That's it!
I guess I picked the wrong trails for garbage. I continued my ride on other trails and came upon a pesky tree.
I made an adjustment, so the trail work wasn't wasted.

I would expect them to be pretty clean today. If Black Bear did cleanup as well as they ran the race, the trails would be pretty clean.
 

Kaleidopete

Well-Known Member
I would expect them to be pretty clean today. If Black Bear did cleanup as well as they ran the race, the trails would be pretty clean.
They haven't done cleanup yet, all the arrows are still up on the trails. I just picked the wrong trails to clean.
 

Jeffreywoliver

Well-Known Member
My back still hurts.

As an Allaire local, I always hear people ragging on it that its not real mountain biking. I always shrug it off and think you just aren't pedaling fast enough. This spring I headed north for the first time and raced Ringwood, Mooch and now IF. I guess I can now understand where people were coming from a bit better.

Needless to say the course was not built for me or my strengths, but I wanted to do it to see a new park and get some learning laps in. The course was awesome and I had a lot of fun, well I had fun some of the time. Looking forward to next year and will hopefully be a bit more prepared for the beating. Thanks to Black Bear Cycling for putting on a great event.

I’ve only ridden Allaire once and basically every course ive ridden is new to me because I sort of a noob at this, but I thought the course was mostly awesome. The wet roots caught me off guard and I was glad to be done there. Also that last tech section by the lake was a bit much, but I really enjoyed the course over all. I am local to Nassau Trail and I nterestingly, despite all the tech fetishists out there, Springside (the low tech side) gets much more traffic than Nassau. I personally like the courses where I can ride fast. I’m not fast in the real rocky stuff, but I found IF to be a good mix that made it possible to manage my weakness while leveraging my strengths.
 

onetracker

Well-Known Member
I've never been in a race before with so much trash on the trails. Gu packets, etc. Do MASS races get a lot of triathletes or something? ;)
OK. My buddy Robb and I took the course arrows and tape down tonight and did not find much trash at all. In total, we found ~12 gel and bar wrappers, 4 water bottles, 1 can of spray paint and a coffee cup. All were removed. Most of these items were in locations where I am sure that they were dropped by mistake. No need to doubt the environmental nature of MTB racers, MASS racers or Triathletes. It is a good reminder that all NJ parks are pack in/out. But it seems that racers are observing this rule; I have been running races for a quite a while and simply do not see a problem.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
I commented that I saw a lot of trash, because I saw a lot of trash. :) It was way more than I usually saw, and a lot of it was halfway through the course in one section where it flattened out w/ fire road I assumed most people took their shot at nutrition. I'm a slow guy doing the 50k so I'm moving slowly and also after all the trash is dropped so I see it.

I joke about the triathletes, but I like to think 99% of the trash is accidental. Especially in race mode it's easy to try to put that clif bar wrapper in a jersey pocket and miss, or the trash comes out while grabbing a bar later, etc.

if caught - it is a time penalty to drop anything while doing a triathlon. not that it stops anyone who thinks they are above this stuff.
I saw some discarded items on friday also - we must have a similar pace. i'm either slow and can concentrate, or slow and hypoxic, depending on the grade.
Seems they got it all taken care of - which is what they(we) do.
 
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Kaleidopete

Well-Known Member
So today I thought I'd ride more of the race trails. I rode Banker trail out to Cherry Ridge.
That is the fire road after the single track where I thought I'd find a load of trash, ...nothing.
Black Bear Cycle was out though removing arrows, so maybe they cleaned up, I don't know.
I continued riding the race route, passing Red Dot trail where a blowdown has been for quite
a while. I removed it today and continued on to Old Coal trail and there was another blowdown,
I wonder if it was there for the race? I made it passable anyway. I continued out to the power line,
where I turned and headed back. 0 trash collected. I checked two side trails off Old Coal that head
towards Lookout Lake I believe. Both these trails are blocked with trees down, so I headed back.
Riding back on Banker trail I spooked a medium size bear about 250 lbs. It ran.
Red Dot tree (older photo)
Red Dot76.jpg


Old Coal
oldcoal47.jpg
 
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