2015 HOO-HA! Enduro

The 2015 Massanutten HOO-HA! Enduro was great. I had a lot of fun rolling the Enduro lifestyle and racing with my friends. My day was not without some challenges, but that’s bike racing. I’m stoked and would race it the next weekend if I could!

Here’s how my day unfolded:

I woke up at 5:45am and grabbed my stuff from my in-laws house in Staunton. I contemplated eating breakfast and making some coffee, but I had planned to arrive early at the venue and do a dry run on the 2000 hours trail. I’ve only ever climbed the 2000 hours trail during previous Hoo-Ha XC

When I got to the Burg, I wasted some time trying to find a coffee place, and a restroom. I had my phone with me, but I was not in too serious of a mindset. A spot of research the night before would have saved me some time. But hey, I was rolling Enduro style and it all worked out with a nice cup of java once I stumbled upon Panera.

Soo… I arrived at the event sight closer to 8 and decided just to chill and get ready. Soon I was looking at familiar faces and caught up with some fast guys, Justin Mace and Adam Williams. Also, I talked a bit with another Adam in the neighboring car who was getting ready. If I remember correctly, this was his first Enduro race. He was understandably concerned about the having right equipment and strategy for the race. My advice was to just relax and ride your own race, and most important of all, have fun.

I realized I had spent too much time fooling around and used up my opportunity for making some dry runs on the seeding course section. Again, lesson learned here was that if I had planned better and acted a plan out, I would have been better prepared. But I do that all the time for 100 mile races and stage racing, so for this Enduro I was just living the life… but probably a little too easy.

Stage 1 - Seeding run

The seeding run was an abbreviated and quick section of the third stage. We started in number plate order and jumped into a short pedally section, before diving into the woods. It felt really weird to hit stuff on the Trance trail bike as I’ve been riding my Turner Czar, and Anthem 27.5 a lot lately. So coming from an XC biased muscle memory, the front end sure felt a little lazy and sketchy. Also, there were some slick spots on the trail that didn’t look as squirrely as they were.

I seeded about 12^th and this turned out to be a good position right behind a local fast guy, David Taylor. During my other stage runs, I never had to ask for a pass or get called for a pass from someone behind, which to me tells me the seeding process worked great.

Stage 2 – Kaylors Knob Stage

We climbed up the trail we would be descending all the way to the top to Kaylors Knob. The ride up gave us a preview of the trail we would be descending. However, I knew that  it would look and feel so much different when you climb it and at 1/3  to 1/4  of the speed you descend it. At the top it got significantly rockier, and this showed us what the tricky start would look like. We waited a while for everyone to get up to the top, walked the start section a bit and chewed the fat bout the best lines to take. I got chilled as a breeze blew in and my damp kit cooled me down.

“Ten Seconds…Three, Two, One, …” I fumbled slightly getting clipped in and the rocks at the top snuck up on me. No major falls, just a few silly bobbles and plenty of seconds wasted. Starting the top at a slow and smooth pace would have been wiser. I had some learning to do.

Lesson number one: Relax and ride well as your primary objective.

Lesson number two: It’s really hard to jump into the zone when you’ve been waiting around for any length of time.

Once through the rocks, I started to pick up the pace and was riding pretty well. However, I miss interpreted a course marker and again wasted valuable seconds stopping and turning back to the correct my direction. Now the trail started heading down and I had some fun on techy bits requiring committed moves. In one spot, I threaded the needle between two trees with both sides of the bar scraping. Pucker.

As I got rolling faster, I reminded myself that I’m vacationing very soon, so I better not wreck bad and screw that up.

Again, I felt a little out of my comfort zone on the trail bike, it was not responding as quickly or solidly as my XC rigs. Not necessarily slower, but it felt slower. Towards the bottom, I thumbed to shift into a harder gear, and got nothing but air. This was on the gravel section and I glanced down. The shift paddle was gone! Shit. Not bent, just not there. I still had the downshift paddle, but could not shift to a harder gear. So I just started spinning my brains out, and I rolled the final bit single speed in too low of a gear.

I refilled my water bottled, and drank a beer

Stage 3 – Upper and Lower Ravine Stage

I weighed my options with my missing shift lever, I could not figure out how to actuate the shifter into a smaller cog. It was stuck in the 24 tooth cog. With my two front rings (22/36) that gave me either a 22/24 combo or a 36/24, with the former combo pretty much useless on the course. So it looked like I would be running a single speed 36/24 which was not really quite hard enough of a gear.

The rock gardens that seem to pave the top of the ridge leading to the descent were a little tricky, and I made a mistake and hit my wide bars on a tree, trying to punch it out with my left hand.  The tree always wins. At least I didn’t go over the front and recovered with just a dab.

Next up, exciting rock sections as I entered the downhill section. I bombed through the 3 or so rock drops that were all a bit of a blur, and I’m glad my Trance sucked this stuff up well. I was riding the top third of the downhill well and was able to carry descent speed even with my light gearing. Then I washed out the front end in a corner, scrambled to my feet, and started spinning away like mad. Soon I realized in the crash that the rear shifter has shifted into a easier gear in the crash. Well poop. Now I was rolling with what I later found out was a 36/32, spinning my little legs out whenever I could. The gearing gave me other problems in a slick rock garden with pedally sections. I struggled with spinning out from the easy gearing on the damp rocks.

And so the rest of the stage went for me, zooming down as long as gravity could work it’s magic, and spinning like a mad man when things leveled out. I focused a lot more on pumping stuff and laying off the brakes. This was a great learning experience, I just wish it had not been in the middle of my Enduro runs. I finished with the knowledge that I had probably lost a good bit of time with the wreck and my light gearing.

I refilled my water bottle, grabbed a slice of pizza, and drank a beer.

Stage 4 - 2000 hours trail

Having endured (or enduroed?) the fiasco of the rear shifter actuating to too easy of a gear in the crash on stage 3, I realized I needed to figure out how to shift it into a harder gear for stage 4. So I weighed my options. I had neatly trimmed my excess cable on the rear derailleur when I set the bike up. When I loosened the cable clamp I could only get it to shift one gear before I ran out of cable when the crimp came to a stop. So then I used the barrel adjuster to get one more extra gear. Ok, back to my 36/24 gearing. This time I used the low limit screw to prevent a shift into an easier gear. Ten cogs in the rear, and almost every one of them useless.

I’ve ridden the 2000 hours trail, but only as a climb in previous Hoo-Ha XC races. Man, did it look different going down it fast, with the gusto and speed afforded by 150mm of travel.

I rode most of the top well and was going a decent clip through all the switch back berms and rolling bits between. Then the trail crossed the road and started to level out. I spun like mad and I knew I was getting reeled in by another rider. I put my head down and really focused on trying to pump anything I could and stay off the brakes… and I spun my little legs like mad. So far, I had managed to keep the rider I had glimpsed at bay, and maybe even gain a modest amount of a gap back, but then the trail spit out onto the final  1/4 mile or so of flat gravel. I spun like mad, but at some point there was no more speed to gain from 200 RPM. Finally, a bit of short climb! It was odd, but for me this was a blessing, I could finally use my legs to accelerate!

After cresting the short climb, there was maybe another 300 yards to the finish, and I spun to no avail on the slight downward grade. I got caught by the rider chasing me right at the end. There was nothing I could do about it, except smile.

I got cleaned up, and drank a beer, and then another.

Then I had a great time hanging out with all the racers and comparing experiences from the day.