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| From South East Mountain Biking |
I had originally planned on doing the 60 mile version until the Cohutta fell through due to my FE or EIT test was scheduled for the same day. I was pretty bummed about this as I was hoping to do something big this year being my last semester of undergrad. Luckily one of the guys on my road team had signed up to the 80 miler but due to conflicts was unable to go. I took his spot and was able to find Phil who I was car pooling with someone to transfer with. I knew the OC 80 was going to be harder then Cohutta as the OC has about 10-15 miles of roads with the rest being singletrack as where the Cohutta has about 65 miles of road and 35 miles of singletrack.
We arrived in Mena, AR Saturday afternoon and explored the Talimena Scenic Drive something I had been on before on my bike camping trip but not the section we explored. The race had quite a few pros coming out from Colorado as the race is making quite a name for itself. The hotel parking lot was littered with Texas license plates as a bunch of Texans come up to do this race also.
Sunday morning on the way to the race a little drizzle started to fall and the winds started picking up. Looking at the weather forecast a front was moving in and going to cause the temperatures to drop considerably. I picked up my number and packet and got my bike ready. I setup near the back of the pack so as to not go out to hard as we were starting the same time as the 60 milers. When we started I rode up to the middle of the pack and stayed there for most of the road.
I moved up on the initial singletrack climbing as 20 or so riders were on the side with flats already. I tried to climb smooth and easy as I knew I would be in for a long day of riding. When we first hit the Womble we had a bottleneck and I was forced to get off my bike and walk a bit, but everyone was very cordial and the road did a much better job of separating everyone as compared to Syllamo. Checkpoint one was 20 miles into the ride and I stopped and notice my QR rear skewer was loose which has been a common theme with the Ellsworth skewers. I tightened it down again ate some of my energy bars and started back up on the Womble. This is where the 60 miler's turned off and took the road skipping the best part of the Womble.
I started feeling cramps coming on just before the second checkpoint so I slammed some Endurolytes and kept on moving along. I got my first and only flat and had about 10 riders pass me while changing it. It was great to see the second checkpoint at roughly the 40 mile mark and the volunteers there were great filling my camelback and waterbottles. While I tried to down some food and stretch out my legs.
A few miles into the checkpoint we came up on Reed mountain that I don't believe anyone could bike up. The hike up it about did me in as my legs were feeling like jello at this point and I was starting to get foggy upstairs. It was slow going at this point and had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn't going to make the cutoff for the next checkpoint. I was completely wasted physically at this point and made it to the 3rd checkpoint with 5 minutes to spare but didnt want to continue as the 4th checkpoint was 10 miles away and I had an hour to get there. I decided to take to road back which was tough with the 20-30 mph winds. About 5 miles out somebody in a truck picked me up with two other riders and gave us a lift back.
According to the results 100 people started the 80 and only 33 finished which means 66 people DNF'd including me.
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