What a day...
So for us people doing the 100 race, today we pre rode the whole course. It rained last night and its pretty cold and cloudy here so nothing was dry. Didnt find out until today but we did get to use the park lift for three of the 5 stages....The lift doesnt take you anywhere near the top of the stages, but it take about 600ft off of the climbs.....so pretty nice...However, when we got off the lift, they made us ride down the hill, then up this grass hike a bike.....hard to tell, but its REALLY steep, hard to even walk the last pitch.
Waiting in line with
@Meatball Mia
The lift line was LONG...
So we started with stage 2...its the lower J bar trail. Its a typical kingdom XC trail, 2 miles long...decent amount of pedaling on it, but flowy and fun.
Stage 3 is the waynes world trail, which is pretty steep at the start, few slippery chutes, but pretty fun. Then it goes into the black forest trail....which is a little flatter and super flowy.
Stage 4 was a little weird. The first minute or so of it was in the grass on the ski hill....This was interesting, like the steepest cross course ever....really slippery, off camber... But then into enchanted forest which is smooth and flow with some roots.
Made thru those stages, then we grabbed some more food and water and got ready for the toll road climbs....My plan was to take off my body armor, knee pads and such....pack them in my back pack and climb the toll road wearing a little less gear....wasnt terrible...Thankfully it was pretty cool today but also super humid...So from the lift to the top it took us about 45 min...this is 45 min like in your granny gear.
Stage 5 (rude awakening)....so they basically just said go and like 100 people headed down this VERY sketchy trail....Its like a sea of steep, wet off camber roots....Sketchy as hell. Some of the spots you might want to session, but it was impossible bc there were people all over the place. After a short time we said F this and just kept riding. Not sure how I got thru that without crashing....however, I certainly didnt feel very fast. Pat said it was the hardest trail he has ever ridden and hes ridden way harder stuff than me, so??? It was certainly a challenge being wet and slick.
Back to the toll road for another hour of so of climbing with a water stop. It was certainly worse the second time, but not as bad as I thought.
Stage 5...Upper J bar....Pat had me lead in this stage. Once again they sent everyone off at once and the first hard spot was parking lot. This trail is probably harder than rude awakening, but its a little more my speed...steep, rocky, gnar...Conditions were better than rude awakening, but still pretty slick...Made it thru all the hard spots clean, but it was again a shit show.
In all it was an 8 hour day, about 4hrs moving. 20 miles and 6500 ft of climbing. Cant believe im doing this again tomorrow but no lift assist. This is without a doubt the craziest race course I have ever done...biggest climbs, crazy descents.
Me, Pat, Mike and Mia roll out and start our race around 1130 tomorrow.