I feel like I could talk about PMBAR for days. After missing last year so Katie could partake it was time to return to my favorite and what I’d call the best bike race in Pisgah, PMBAR. I’ll spare all the details, but in short, there’s no set route, just a handful of places to get to, a few rules, some off-limits trails (just to keep you on your toes), no on course support, and you’re probably looking at 60-80 miles/10-13k of elevation/7-12 hours of bike riding. It’s going to be a big day filled with all kinds of who knows what and you get to take a partner/friend with you to share it with. Now this is my kind of race/event. This was my 8th PMBAR I’ve done most of them since 2011 with a few misses.
I’d been looking forward to this race since last year, there’s just something about PMBAR that gets me excited. This year I ended up with a relatively last-minute partner adjustment due to some family scheduling conflicts. Fortunately, there are some other folks who enjoy long bike rides in the woods as well. It wasn’t too hard to find someone to come out and play and I would still be the slow guy on the team. The weather leading up to the race had been dry, the trails were downright dusty, but the forecasts for the week had been all over the map. As we got to Friday, the storms moved in and dumped a good bit of rain. Luckily, the rain ended by 7ish on Friday and the weather for Saturday looked great. By Saturday my theory of the trees being thirsty was holding up and the saturation was low.
Friday ended up getting away from me quickly and between rain showers and a few other things checking in just wasn’t going to happen. I did manage to run a few errands to be able to get most of my food and pack together which was nice. As many times as I’ve done these longer days, I still feel like it’s my first time when I go to put my pack together. Bladder/no bladder, what food, how much, and lately I just get it wrong all the time. I feel like I’ve finally figure out the 3–5-hour race nutrition but longer than that and I’m still struggling. Maybe because I do 1-2 a year? Either way, I feel all out of sorts. At least my bike is in good shape, and I have the required gear, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
Race Morning
Champ and I decided to ride over to the ride, because you know…who doesn’t need a warmup before 7-12 hours in the woods. The weather was nice and honestly, it’s an easy flat roll over, I prefer it to dealing with parking over there anyhow. The parking lot isn’t all that full just yet but immediately start running into folks I knew. This was one of the first “big” races back for me since the pandemic and PMBAR just seems to bring out what I’d call my people. So many friendly faces from the super-fast folks to the 1st time PmBar folks trying to get a proper finish. It was awesome.
Racer meeting has some mention about how many trees the backcountry horsemen have removed from Bradley Creek Trail…Not the happy news I was looking for. The rest is pretty boiler plate. Finally, it’s passport time.
No Prologue loop (read this 500 times to be sure)
Start/finish up/down Black Mtn
Bradley Creek Road off limits and the other standard things (276, 280, etc.)
Checkpoints
Squirrel/Cantrell
Bradley Creek Trail/Bradley Creek Road
Spencer/Trace
Fletcher (just south of spencer intersection)
Pilot Cove northernmost creek crossing
There’s an obvious loop and honestly not many variations that made any sense whatsoever. The only real question was clockwise/counterclockwise – which ultimately, I think only had one right answer.
We took it all in in the parking lot, which I’ve generally come to be OK with, but after this year I think maybe we doddled too much? I don’t know, but we had to make entirely too many sketchy passes going up Black and sat in the conga line for far too long. Next year I think I’m going back to the get the passport, quick read and get up to Pressley then figure it out.
More tomorrow…
