Another year, another PMBAR, this was the event’s 20th year and my 9th time at the event. Still my favorite event on bikes. I think there are 2 reasons for this, 1st is that it’s a partner event meaning everyone there is riding with someone else, 2nd there isn’t a set course which means there are options and it’s not just a complete race. It’s also a longer day, most of the time to be in the top 5 you’ll need to get to all 5 checkpoints which typically takes 6.5-9 hours. Even though I don’t get to ride as much as I used to the longer days still seem to work well for my mental side of things. Regardless, I love PMBAR day.
This year riding with my good buddy Joe Driver from Brevard. Neither of us have had the time to ride anywhere near as much as we used to, you know with Kids and life and such. Both of us still manage to keep some sort of fitness though. Joe’s the kind of rider that can seemingly get fit in in a week by riding twice, me…not so much. We also haven’t really had a good chance to ride together this year, how that happened I’m not sure. Honestly time is sort of a blur right now. Kids, work, life, it all sort of feels like hyperdrive. Which lead me to Leading up to the race the weather forecast was looking rough. It really looked like we were going to be very wet and honestly not that warm. What are you going to do though, it’s Pisgah.
Friday rolled around and we went over to check in and talk to Erik (race director) for a few minutes and get the descriptions exciting and interesting. Which if you know Erik might be a little concerning. We figure he’s just trying to mess with folks but it’s hard to tell with him sometimes. Anyhow, Katie had somewhere to be that evening, so I had both kids, dinner, bedtimes etc. which isn’t a big deal but changed the flow of pre-race night. Fortunately, I’d made my race “treats” earlier. After seeing some posts of folks making Fruity Pebble treats, I decided that part of my race nutrition should be Cocoa Pebble Treats with Sea Salt. As soon as I think I’m going to be out there longer than 3-4 hours I really like to mix in some regular food. (I also had some little Debbie cosmic brownies in my pack…)
Pre-Race
Joe and I are both sort of chronically late, so we set a goal of getting over to the start a few mins earlier than we probably needed to but I think that was good because we were both a little later than we needed to be. Rolling around the start area there were so many familiar faces and friends. Did I mention I love PMBAR? Trying to catch up with everyone was tough but it kept all sorts of nerves down which was nice. We also didn’t really have a ton of expectations this year since neither of us had been able to put effort into “training” and we were going to be relying on long term fitness and whatever Dad strength we could.
A few minutes before go time, we decided to move up near the front of the group. Which in PMBAR I’ve started doing a lot less recently because generally you have to get your passport then do some reading/prepping before taking off. Erik started into his speech of thanks and all that, then he explained the start as going up Black Mountain and all the way over to Buckhorn Gap. Which was fine and not a crazy change. Finally…he says passports are at Buckhorn gap and we’d be leaving in 10 seconds to get there. Oh damn, that means straight to a singletrack climb in a hurry.
Racing
We gotta go and go fast, the gate’s still shut, it turns into a mess. We’re headed up the double track, scooting around as many as possible, get into the conga line up the rocks and make a few more passes before we settle in with Wes and Hannah for a few minutes. We started to lighten the mood with some Dad jokes before it was time to get on it again. When we got a good opening on one of the wider turns we went inside and made a few more passes, a little banter with Watts/Dicky before things really opened up and we were able to settle into our own pace. We were joined by Justin and Eric and the four of us cruised up and over Black. The climb all the way up to TurkeyPen has become a regular ride for me but I rarely go all the way over the top, turns out that’s actually a lot of fun in that direction. A few really tough switchbacks and moves but really fun. I’ll be adding that into the mix more in the future.
Passport Acquired – normal rules. 276 is open except where it never is and checkpoints:
- Club Gap (Mandatory)
- Sassafras Gap on Laurel Mountain
- Laurel Gap on Squirrel Gap Trail
- Pilot Cove (at the Slate Rock Creek Crossing)
- South Mills (about where PoundingMill comes into the trail)
With the of course mandatory finish of Middle/lower Black
There’s some choices to be made, we actually got the map out, and of course I forgot the marker so we were putting gummy dots onto the map. A little debate and we’re off, South mills, Squirrel, horse cove, south mills, to get the first one, then we’ll go up to squirrel and get that one, Laurel creek, Bradley Creek road, up to laurel, probably out and back to it, then down to slate/pilot cove area, then gravel out to club gap, climb up there and grab that last one, drop Avery Creek Trail to the halfway road, drop claw, to maxwell, to Black. Easy Peasy.
It’s uneventful for a while, South mills comes and goes, cross the river at Wolf Ford, Climb up squirrel out to Horse Cove. Hang the right onto horse cove and enjoy some good old fashioned fun. This trail doesn’t see a lot of riding but man is it fun. It’s narrow, technical, and running really good right now. Unfortunately, it dumps you down into the bottom of Pisgah, so there’s some flat tracking out. We picked up the first checkpoint and still haven’t seen another person. We’d considered heading back and climbing Cantrell to get back up to squirrel gap, but after not seeing anyone and the distance we rode on South Mills we kept going out towards Mullinax.
Moving along at a pretty good clip and into one of the rock gardens, Joe hits an angled rock and does a pretty good tail slide. As he saves it, I do the same thing and end up in the air staring down at my front wheel…this isn’t good…fortunately I somehow grabbed some level of control and put myself down in a pretty easy spot with the only real casualty being my hand landing in a mud puddle. How that’s possible I’m still not sure. We started climbing up Mullinax and we’ve already got one team coming at us wayyyy too soon. Tries and Bookwalter, already I’m trying to figure out how we screwed up. There wasn’t much to be done. We ended up running into a bunch of traffic later coming at us. A lot of folks came straight across squirrel to get the Laurel gap point first. That was probably a good move. There were a few people on our route, so I wasn’t too worried yet.
Second checkpoint done and we’re headed back down squirrel the fun way to Laurel Creek and the thousands of lashings from all the dog hobble and overgrown trail. Narrowly escaping multiple pointy things and somehow, I would only find out later after showing how beat my arms got during this. Settling into the climb up Bradley Creek road was a nice change, relatively easy pedaling. After a while we come across a hiker and some pups, who I recognize and start to think we must be close to the end. Nope, apparently, she’d walked a ways in, but her husband Eric was out at the end of the road with Grilled cheese and snacks!! Nice little surprise.
We made the call to go up Laurel to get to the Sassafras Checkpoint. Which I thought was a no brainer then our plan was to go out and back then head down the gravel to pick up Slate. I assumed a few teams in front of us would do the same. Laurel might have been one of the lower points of the day, we weren’t moving all that quickly, we didn’t see a soul for a while. Starting to doubt our route, but no sooner do we see Keith and Ethan coming at us, and we’re close to the point. This means they aren’t that far in front of us but also they’re doing what we were going to do. Instead of confirming our plan, it more or less made us change our plan to go over the top of Pilot. We weren’t going to outrace them, we had to hopefully have a quicker route. So after the checkpoint it was up and over Pilot, Pilot’s beat and it beat me up. Although I did ride a lot more of the switchbacks and cleaned the rocks so I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.
We pass a few folks climbing pilot, JD and Sigsbey, who I thought were much closer to where we were. Then head over to Pilot Cove/Slate where we start to see lots of people. Now I’m so confused as to who is where and what. We keep going, ride till we walk, over the top, get the point and rally back. It’s only about a 40 min out and back before we’re on our way to the last point. 1206, 276, 477 to club gap.
We put forth some effort and move across the gravel quickly, not necessarily full pin but with some haste. We catch the Gravelo ladies we’d seen a few times throughout the day and head up to Club. Catching the single speed duo of Nuebert/Rhinehart before the last Checkpoint being manned by the legendary Chris Joice. We had some quick chit chat, he’s of course reluctant to sway my route choices but banters none the less. We stick to the plan of dropping Avery creek down to the halfway road and traversing across to Clawhammer, to drop to Maxwell, and make the final approach. Passing one more team of Zuemstein/Sweat on the halfway road. The rest goes by like it should. We were both ready to get to that line.
Post Race
When we got to the finish line and turn in the stuff, we realized maybe we did alright. After the dust shook out we figured out we were 5th, one of the teams in front of us had taken an off map trail that cut off a bunch of time. The podium was going to go 5 deep, 4th and 5th weren’t getting anything but a picture but hey we’ll take it. With my birthday only being a few days away Katie had dropped off some cupcakes to celebrate. Burritos, beer, cupcakes, friends, and great weather made for a great cap to a great day on bikes.
I had a lot of second guessing on the route all day long, but after finishing, talking to some and thinking about it some more, I think we did it pretty darn close to right. There were a few places I think there were options like going all the way across squirrel to start, or the out and back on Laurel, or even finishing going over the top of Black. However I think it’s all pretty close, which is one of the fun parts of PMBAR, there’s options. You’re also out riding with a friend all day. Then you get to finish, and see a bunch of friends there and talk to them about what they did and sometimes further doubt yourself or maybe confirm what you did. Either way it’s good times.
For maybe the first time ever I think Joe and I did a good job of pacing and not destroying ourselves early. We pushed but we both still had some legs almost all day. My cocoa pebble treats, cosmic brownies, Swedish fish, and Carbo Rocket kept me fueled all day.
9 years of PMBAR and I’m already looking forward to the next one. No matter how you look at it you’re in for a big day. Odd’s are you’re going to learn something and you’ll probably have some fun.
