Sunday, October 21, 2012

Trans North GA...3rd times a....Lucky Break!!

So, for the 3rd year in a row, I head down south for the group start of the TransNorth GA 360 mile self supported mountain bikepack 'route', not technically designated as a 'race', but timed for overall comparisons (see explanation & rules at below website.)

Description of what the route/start is all about and the 'rules':
http://www.firstworks.com/tnga/
2010, 2011, and 2012 results:
http://www.firstworks.com/tnga/results.html

Bike used in 2010: Orbea 29
Bike used in 2011/2012: Salsa Ala Carte 26

As you can see in the results last year's group was cut short by a really bad tropical storm that came through ending up making it just too dangerous for everyone to continue on. This year, hurricane Issac was looming, and threw some rain/wind around Monday/Tuesday but nothing to slow anyone down!! In fact, this year's leaders rivaled last years record leading time by exact seconds regardless of weather and a route detour! Oddest thing ever, but great riding guys!

This year, the group got big....35 starters at the cap with a waiting list! 2010 was 18 starters and less finishers, 2011 was 23 starters (7 of those were invites that I had initiated....geez, who else invites the competition?? really....) This year, I invited no one, I have shit to get done and can't be concerned with not getting some more of my bucket list things done in these last few years of riding/racing that I probably will even be able to do. Things just go smoother to focus on my own goals instead of try to include anyone else. This plan has so far been working this year:-)
 
Along with that, super big thanks as usual to all the folks that make this route happen, esp for the peeps coming from out of town since it's P2P, etc, etc :

-Dave Muse of course, as head honcho. Even though he leaves this as a self support ride and arrangements, he makes concious effort so that logistics & safety are not impossible for people to figure out which makes it reasonable to put this ride on your schedule if you are anywhere on the east coast (or not) and want to do some MTB bikepacking on some all out classic trails!

-The ladies, Diane and Ginny, at Mulberry Gap Mountain Bike Getaway, who will do just about anything needed. (organize shuttles, cook food, sleeping spots, etc)

-Andrew at Mulberry Gap, he shuttles us in his truck thru the forest 'S' shapes roads really fast when he's sleep deprived from picking up riders all night long AND is a great breakfast organizer! He will also spot you some cash when you realize you left your MAC/money all back at the initial shuttle pick up....lol...

The really nice Yurts that MB arranged for us to stay in just 30 minutes from the start.
-Rick Moon (president of the Pinhoti Trail Assoc) for the limo shuttle every year so far, the cool music selection, support of the Pinhoti as a long-standing multi-use trail (which is so awesome since a lot of states don't have such a thing!) and moral support to get the show on the road! (and I am SO sorry to the 5 guys in the limo for all my huge amounts of luggage....lol...I assumed it was my personal limo ride:-)
Rick's generously provided Limo carts 6 of us plus bikes!
-to all the guy riders who were really nice to me along the way, and let me stay in the yurt with them and didn't make me feel left out as the only girl starting out this year:-)
-of course shop help with getting stuff I needed from Top Gear.

-and last and usually least, JPOK. I don't even know how many times he gritted his teeth and interrupted his evening beertime to continue to repeat the same information to me over and over about my bike because I can't remember it all:-)

-and to several friends that I know kept an eye on the trackers just to help me feel kind of cuddly out there, even though I DO NOT ever use a cell phone or any other kind of contact with anyone during the route. (I keep it with me OFF, for emergency use only.)

Since I was the only girl this year, I just pray so hard I am not dead last! As usual, everyone eyes up the huge variety of packing scenerios just hoping yours is correct to get you thru. Someone yells at me that my bike looks way too heavy;-)

Right off the bat, the route starts climbing away, things spread out quick....the first day flies by and before you know it I am at the WildCat reroute (~75 miles) (we are directed to avoid a gravel climb due to a landslide to a different route that will cut a few miles off and sounds peachy.....actually it is a hellish rocky/grassy jeep road straight up the side of the mountain. I laugh continually at the craziness of this road while I trudge on) At this point I have seen no one for quite sometime. I had seen Clay (SS who I happened to know from the year before) and James (?) a bit earlier but had a feeling Clay got into a glitch with his gps, I had waited at a tricky turn and he didn't show up so I really hoped he was finding the reroute ok. I really wondered if people had already gone off route somewhere or if everyone ahead was bombing towards Helen(~100 miles) for the night already??

Up the last hill before Helen, Clay comes flying by, a little ticked as he says "I've been lost ALL day"...oh boy, I feel bad I didn't see him at that turn! Oh I guess he'll get over it....he seemed to be beelining it to Helen. Once at the top of this mountain, for the third year in a row I get dazed and confused...it just turns dusk and the garmin flips out here. I get completely disoriented as to which intersection I am really at and cannot find the correct trailhead although I know full well what the trail entrance looks like, and after having already one near total collision with a smaller bear and a jaunt down the mountain in the wrong direction, I am about frustrated as crap when Karlos and his posse of casualness comes rolling up. I'm hysterically like "it's RIGHT here, I know it!!" ugh, they helped me realize I needed to go one more intersection and there it was....duh....this wasted about 2 hours of my night getting me to Helen late, missing an open store and losing some rest time.

I decide to keep going without getting anything at Helen, as I pedal out of town I see a biker coming towards me....who in the world is going backwards??? lol..it turns out to be Scott T. (see his more detailed but funny TNGA summaries http://www.driven2divide.com/category/rides-and-races/page/2/ ) shortcutting to town and I start to con him into riding with me but it becomes obvious he needs rest and a hotel to just reorganize his shit after a frustrated evening. And I guess to talk to his wife. As Dave M. said on his blog, I also don't quite get anyone's need to contact significant others to assure them of your still being alive. I hear it a lot, and still don't feel the need to let Justin know anything about what I am up to out there? I mean he can watch the tracker, and he knows I have 911 if there is an emergency and he knows approximate times I will bypass towns that I would stop there if I needed to. Otherwise, he really has no clue what is going on until I am done and home....then he gets an earful:-)

I continue on anyway making it until I am really exhausted, find a spot to lay down and catch a nap. A few hours later, some bikers go by waking me up and we all catch up at the next store down from Coopers Creek, a super long fun dirt road downhill. And again, at the next stop past Aska Road I see Alex and Clay just finishing up some grub. I order an egg sandwich to go, and almost slap the clerk silly when she says it'll be $7!!! wth....ONE EGG?? I make a bold decision I won't buy anything else there....ooopsie...not too smart (as I had already dug into my reserves by missing the stores by Helen). I pay for this later, basically I do not ever get anymore food until I reach Dalton the next late afternoon, but I manage to ration the precious $7 egg over that time, what a complete rip.

Some tricky navigation into singletrack at Stanley Gap, (it gets tricky here as the trails are rerouted) luckily Alex and Clay are still around so I make it thru ok. A little road haul and a few climbs onto the next store stop but it's closed as I suspected. We stretch out here a bit & eat. Clay is eager as a beaver to get headed towards Dalton, and takes off quick. I never see him again, ends up he had a great finish time and was the first SS to finish so far on the route!! Alex passes me up the hill, same thing, never see him again. In fact, from this time (mile ~200?) until the end I see absolutely no one else....peaceful but I kept wondering where in the world is everyone???

Turns out I find out later that Ardie and Thomas were very near me during the last day and night, but I never saw them at all. Ardie was just ahead of me, and Thomas after a reroute, passed me while I took a picnic at the town of Dalton (~70 miles before the end, the last stop for anything and the last spot before you are up on the mountain ridge for the next portion of your life, which for me was going to be night time). But without seeing them, I had to do what I do not do best....ride a TON at night in the forest sections alone. After one bear run in and an absolutely spiritual encounter with a beautiful snake up on the Snake Gap of all places (lol...)...I resorted to just about screaming my bear calls and getting a little hoarse. oh man, if Ardie or Thomas must have heard me.....so this snake, I have NO IDEA what kind it was, but I guess the combination of being really tired, on a trail called The Snake, it's casual manner, and my bike lights hitting it, made it shine like highly polished gold with intricate designs and with a fuzzy aura all around it. I was dumbfounded but felt lucky I happened upon it while walking so didn't risk hitting it. Anyway, after that I felt some calm being out here, I mean the snake was so cool & collected and could care less about my foot being 2 inches from it that I started not being scared anymore. And after awhile the same with the bear incident, as I came barreling thru some low branches he all but killed himself to get up some slippery steep rocks to get away from me!! ha, take that dumb bear! But now, the PIGS....oh I didn't see any of the pigs yet, that may be the end of my night riding!

My total time for this year was of course much better than 2010, but the circumstances were much different as well. I didn't use a gps then and was a total beginner to bikepacking and had never been in this area before at all, only hunching at resources from studying the map and internet. I am fairly certain my pace this year and last year were about comparable overall as far as I got last year, but with a major difference: last year I did at least attempt to rest/sleep a decent bit and so my riding felt better. This year, I tried to pull a little more night miles and really ended up just too exhausted to really ride a lot of the course after that which although still gave me a better time it just didn't feel as good to be walking that much of a BIKE race! Although as Clay had put it, as he ends up walking some uphills due to SS, think of it as a new sport: PushBike. That was funny, and I kept just thinking yeah, it's ok to push for now it's still an effort forward:-)

So, my lucky breaks comes in that since few girls have yet to finish this route, my time this year is the best female finish to date at 3:03:45, and current bikepack ultra record: http://www.bikepacking.net/ultra-records/
It's kind of exciting to have made that page for me, although I know there are a few southeast girls, maybe even a few named Kari, or is that Carey(?), that will be eyeing this route up a little closer soon.....and probably up that time by a lot. Thanks to the peeps who recognized that for me it was still a fun result to get for the 'record' for now as only one of 2 girl finishers to date, even if it wasn't as fast as the next ones will do, I am glad to have done it sooner than later at whatever pace I can and for now still having fun doing these routes vs as much XC, NUE, and heaven forbid the ancient 24hr scene like in years past.

A few things I noticed this time through more than before, one was how much of the trails of the Pinhoti are now being gone over and machine built. I know it's the future for trail sustainability, but I find it so adrenaling killing to ride miles of machine built trails. Being that it makes all trails look and feel just about the same, it takes a huge chunk of the adventure out of going somewhere new and all trails have the same types of switchbacks, degrees of steepness, etc. I will do some more, but as this is the future of development, I have a feeling I will end up mountain biking less and less. Although I know the masses of riders love it, and it helps bring more new bikers to the sport.

The other I noticed was, um, a little ease of navigation along some areas. Wow, huge time difference here between the past and now, esp at night! I won't go in to details but let's just say the nav is about 100% completely doable in some areas even at night that if you didn't know the area was pretty much impossible to do at night a few years ago....kind of a buzzkill for me being that I had to nav it at night my first time by literally step by step which I thought was a cool challenge, but development never ceases in terms of simplifying things.

So, here was a section NOT machine built...lol. Maybe doesn't look so significant in the photo but this down tree across an off camber section threw me for a loop for quite a bit. The only feasible go around was to pitch your bike up the hill and over two tree trunks and the dirt was all soft and crumbling, let alone lifting a heavy bike, I tumblerwd down this hill multiple times before making it! Someone did ask me later that when they were getting over it they wondered how in the world I would ever make it being so shrimpy....my answer was 'everything just takes me that much longer'....sigh, story of my life.

Fallen trees across trail with steep go around, takes me a long time!









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