Mount Snow, Deerfield Ridge, Wilmington, Hogback Mountain, Mollystark State Park, Harriman Reservoir. (All replaced with a straight shot of mercy)
0/9 Mandatories
0/21 Optionals
The rain continued the whole night. I was actually really thankful for the constant pattering on the tent walls that muffled all the normal sounds that can keep you awake while resting at a TA. I probably slept deeper and harder in those hours than I had all week. The only things that woke me every hour were the tilted angle that caused me to constantly slide down and nearly off my sleeping pad, and the occasional drop of water that inevitably comes through to drip right on your forehead when you sleep in a tent while its raining. In an attempt to avoid as much excess pack weight as possible, and with the assurance he is totally fine without one, Dan had chosen not to bring a sleeping pad. While this may have been fine last year when the temperatures during the race had repeatedly reached record highs, this year was proving to be a bit colder and he spent a majority of the night shivering next to Becky.
At one point during the night, race staff was coming around asking if any teams were interested in dropping and if they needed a ride back to North Adams. I hadn't heard that exchange, but I did wake up to Dan and Becky discussing something. I asked what they were talking about, and I don't recall if they responded and I just didn't understand them, or if no one responded and I just gave up trying to figure out what was going on, but I rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour or so.
Eventually the morning light poked us awake and we realized the rain had stopped. We sat in the tent discussing our options for another few minutes before we had a game plan. None of us wanted to drop. A decent night rest, sunlight, and a stop to the rain gave us all a renewed zest for continuing on. The upcoming bike stage was supposed to be a long and elevation filled endeavor. Dan still wasn't keen on riding for extended distances, and Becky and I had lost our fiery resolve to push for more points. We decided that whatever the bare minimum was to be considered an official finisher is what we were going for. Dan had not slept well with all his shivering, so he remained in the tent while Becky and I emerged.
I looked around the TA in the morning light and realized we were far from the only bums who hunkered down for the night. We were also not alone in our decision to scrape off any extra "fluff" from this upcoming bike leg. Brent was understanding of everyone's evening plight in the torrential rains, and was busy trying to decide what could be done to shorten stage F. He was currently deep in discussions with the ARWS ref trying to hatch a plan. He promised he would let me know what they decided on as soon as they decided.
I took the chance to use the bathroom and start taking inventory of our water logged and scattered gear. We had actually managed to keep some semblance of organization to our stuff, so Becky and I got to work. We deflated the packrafts, wiped them down as best we could, rolled them up and returned them to the packraft bag. We collected all the paddles, PFDs, and other rafting gear, found our TA 5 bags, and hauled all 3 bike boxes over to our site. Suddenly, I saw something that completely altered my mood. The sun was popping out from behind the clouds and casting golden speckled rays of warmth between the leaves of the surrounding trees. I paused in a beam of sunlight and let it warm me. It was going to be alright. Actually, it was gonna be great.
Brent was making rounds to all the racers, giving them their options. We scooted over to a group of teams listening intently. While the option was not there for us to just b-line directly back to North Adams, and honestly, I'm now VERY thankful that wasn't an option, Brent had given us the choice to take a very direct road route to TA 6. We wouldn't have the chance for any of the mandatory points, and we would only really come even remotely close to one optional CP, but we were cutting off miles and miles of stage F. The route wasn't even on any of our maps, so he had a hand drawn map that was being passed around and copied by plenty of other teams with the same mindset as us. Part of me was sad to be missing this stage. It was the only part of the course that I had some local knowledge of from having raced with Chris in GMARA's Hard Fall in 2024. That race had covered area all around Mount Snow and Wilmington, which would be where we would have headed had we not taken Brent's short course route.
Obviously, Dan was all for this option, and Becky and I had to agree, with our lost hours here at TA 5, we were in need to make up some time. I copied down the map and we continued on getting ourselves organized and ready for biking. B&Z were still camped out next to us, and also slowly getting themselves together. They asked if we would be interested in linking up for the ride and I yipped out a "TOTALLY!" without a pause. Dan, however, hinted that it wouldn't work well since we had a much slower bike pace than them. They assured us that they would happily go whatever pace we had. I so wanted for them to join us. I really enjoy them and their humor, but it was obvious Dan didn't have an interest in it. We all continued putting our bikes together and cleaning up our gear.
As expected, a bunch of my gear was still drenched from the overnight rains. I stuffed all my wet clothes from the night before into a ziplock bag and threw them into the paddle bag, but I needed my rain coat and pants as mandatory gear. We didn't have enough time for the sun to dry them efficiently, so I took matters into my own hands and waved them around like a flag girl in the color guard of a small town parade. Becky joined with me for a few moments of silly, lighthearted playfulness and with that, my outlook on the day, and race, returned to one of joy and thankfulness. Right around that same time, a volunteer came up to us with our trail mail from the tracking site. We smiled and giggled at the encouraging words from our friends and family. It reminded me that we were so lucky and fortunate to be right there, right then.
Once we were all bundled up and perched on our bikes with bags and boxes returned to the Uhaul, we went to check out of the TA. Brent apologized for the "crudeness" of the hand drawn map, but we assured him it was everything we needed and more. All we needed to do was mindlessly follow the road out until we hit blacktop. If we got lost between here and there, we would have been trying to get turned around. We rode out of the TA, and I waved at B&Z encouraging them to catch up to us quickly!
As unexpected as it was, the initial few miles of that go-around bike leg were my favorite biked miles of the entire race. We were on a hard packed gravel road that climbed and descended alongside a beautiful and fast moving river. Becky and I drooled over the beautiful rapids and hydraulics peppered all along it's flowing route. I wondered aloud why that awesome looking waterway wasn't part of the course for the race, and Becky astutely stated the river probably only looked so perfect because of the inundation of rains we had the night before. Good point. Well, if we couldn't raft it, at least we got to enjoy watching it wind along our route with mountains and valleys hugging it's boarders.
At one point the view was so picturesque I couldn't help myself. I asked Dan to record the sights with his go-pro. He didn't feel up to following my requested landscape encompassing directions, so he handed me the little device and told me to do whatever I wanted. I dropped my bike and walked back a few hundred yards to capture the entire bend in the river along with the beautiful sun soaked mountains in the distance. It was one of the most stunning views I've been blessed to encounter, so I took an extended video. As I was walking back to them, Dan and Becky were talking and facing the opposite direction, so I took the opportunity to ever so not politely adjust my bike shorts that were riding up in places where they had no business hanging out. As luck would have it, just as I completed this crude task, I heard the rumble of tires coming up behind us. I had apparently picked the exact time 4 vehicles, heavily laden with men of various ages, were riding upon us to dig my shorts out of my butt. Awesome. All I could do was laugh and wave an apology as they rode by.
The national forest road eventually ended and dropped us onto a busy multilane roadway. There was a shoulder, thankfully, but the grade of the road shot up precariously to our right. I crossed my fingers that we were going to go left, but after just glancing at Brent's map, I realized we had to go right. Right. We tried to stay in the saddle as long as possible, but it didn't last long. Soon enough we had to stop to not only shed layers of clothes, but give Dan a moment to catch up. At that very moment B&Z came upon us. I hoped they would stop and join us, but I guess they picked up what Dan was putting down and they kept trucking up the hill.
The road made a sweeping turn to the left as the grade remained steep and daunting. As we continued up, the shoulder became more and more narrow, to the point there was no space between the white thick line of the road and the dented and gnarled guardrail to our right. Many many many vehicles had been deflected from the cliff edge that lined the side of the road by that guardrail. And there we were, pushing our bikes up right alongside that guardrail as big box trucks, semi trucks, and personal vehicles were shooting up the road with no shoulder. What could go wrong?! Thankfully, nothing went wrong. Other than Dan choosing to stop for a breather a few too many times in that precarious road section for my comfort. But as I said, nothing went wrong.
We were treated to a short downhill section (with a shoulder!) that was short lived, and again we were faced with another steep and narrow uphill. Brent had given us fair warning about the less than ideal road conditions on this shortcut, so we couldn't balk. Prior to facing this next uphill, we pulled over to the side of the road and took a snack break. We all realized that while we had banked a refreshing amount of rest at the last TA, none of us had really eaten very well over the past 12 hours. I took in a few handfuls of gummy bears and shared them with Dan while we watched multiple other teams pass by us on the same route. It made us feel better to know we were far from the only teams short coursing this stage.
After a few more uphills and a whole lot of super fast and furious downhills, we came to a road intersection where we could turn off to grab the sole optional CP we could claim on this go around. F21 appeared to be just off of a dead end road to our left. We pulled into a small gravel lot just at the base of that dead end road and were charged at by a pack of pudgy and perturbed Labrador Retrievers. We quickly searched for the owners of these hounds and saw a few locals scurrying from the porch of a nearby house. They called out "just put your hands up and they won't bite!" So there we stood, hands in the air like a trio of convicts caught in a crime, as we were sniffed and barked at by the defensive dogs. The eyebrow ring from the older lady glinted in the sunlight as she explained the dogs were just a little territorial and didn't like strangers. Fair enough, we did come charging into their turf fast and unannounced. We told her we were looking for a dead end road in that exact area. Her adult son told us the road just behind them was a dead end, but it was private property, as he stared at us as if insinuating that private property was not to be trespassed upon by the likes of these three filthy and strange bicyclists that stood before him. We paused, looking past them at the road signage that eluded to a public road. There was an awkward pause as we realized he was not being truthful, but in his body language as well as the continued threats from the dogs, we were forced to decide that CP was not worth whatever issue we would cause by plowing past this scenario. We thanked them and made a u-turn back to the roadway.
Becky and I looked at the race maps we had returned to while Dan sat on a guardrail and did some sort of pack adjusting. All that stood between us and TA 6 was a relatively flat and short road that would come to triangular intersection, and a right hand turn onto one last road into the TA. We shot off down the road as I counted off other roads to our right. We came to where I thought we needed to turn off, but neither Dan nor Becky agreed. Becky noted that the geographical features in the distance didn't line up with what should be seen from the map. Dan adamantly agreed. I could see what she was saying, but my gut still said we needed to turn off. We crossed a bridge and I looked down the next road on our right and saw that it connected to the previous road. It was a triangular intersection. It HAD to be what we were looking for. We stopped and took in all the clues before us and realized, it was in fact where we needed to turn. Becky was not alone in her thought process though. We later learned that B&Z had also not thought it was the correct turn off, but they had continued on up another steep incline before realizing the error of their ways. At least we had avoided that!
We rode the dirt road into TA 6 which was erected amidst another logging field of destruction and zero shade. The ever-fantastic volunteer crew cheered our arrival and after giving instructions for the TA, let us know piping hot grilled cheese sandwiches would be hand delivered to us within minutes. So, so, so awesome! We located our bike boxes and gear bins. I voted we move into the opening far to our left where B&Z had set up, but the thought of hauling all our gear wasn't tempting to my teammates, so we set up our site right where we were. Fragile flowers was transitioning right next to us, obviously one teammate short. I asked Donna and Anna if Olga was ok, and they assured me she didn't drop because of an injury and that all was well.
I opened my box and bin and went into transitioning as efficiently as I had up to that point. While rummaging through my bin my hand grazed a cool metal cylinder under a bag. I can't describe the amount of excitement the discovery of that seltzer water gave me. I was nearly giddy as I cracked it open. The sound also grabbed the attention of everyone in earshot. The searing sun and heat of the day just added to the allure of that carbonated treat. Anna and Donna both voiced their desire for just such a treat, and while I didn't have more cans, I quickly offered to share my lime flavored "fuzzy water" with them. Anna eagerly accepted the offer and together we slammed that can in less than a minute.
The remainder of the time we spent in the TA was devoted to blister management, sunblock and body lube slathering, and mapping out our upcoming trek leg. By the time we checked out of the TA we realized it was our fastest transition to date with a time of less than 75 minutes. Hey, ya gotta start somewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment