My First 100-Mile Mountain Bike Race: Mohican 100 MTB

It was a very long drive...

Did I mention that I like to pack up my gear the day before traveling to a race? This lets me do things like hop right in the car at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon and drive 7+ hours to Ohio, listening to the National Weather Service issuing their tornado warnings as the rain blots out my windshield and slows me down to a crawl along I-70. Eventually I made it to the Mohican Adventures campground just outside Loudinville, OH, and pitched my tent in the dark, without a headlamp. Whoops! Oh well, of all the things to forget to bring, I guess a headlamp was a good choice.

Waking up bright and early the next morning, I got my act together and rode down to pick up my race packet at the main building, which was right next to the finish line. Returning to camp, I filled up my three drop bags with a bunch of high-octane fuel for later - caffeinated energy gels, stroopwafels (the best!) and bags of powdered sports drink. I also put a few gels, waffles, and a pack of Clif Bloks in my jersey to tide me over until I got to my drop bags, which I dropped at aid stations 3, 4, and 5. I figured that the food in my jersey would keep me going until I got to the later aid stations.

Racers roll out - Photo by Cycling News

I rode back down to the finish area and hopped on the paved bike path that lead to the start in downtown Loudonville, joining a small armada of mountain bikers headed in the same direction. With almost 600 people starting at once (about half for the 100 mile race, and half for the simultaneous 100k race), there was quite a crowd at the starting line.

I started out pretty fast but not smoking. I knew that I needed to pass as many people as possible before we got into the singletrack; getting stuck behind someone who is going slower than you want to is no fun in a race. By the time we had covered the mile or two to the edge of the woods, I felt like I had passed a good number of people and was probably in the front 1/3 of the whole group.

The trails started out as some grassy horse trails, with some tricky off-camber steep descents and a few roots that were slick in the morning dew. I burnt a couple matches through this section which bumped me past several more people, but I was still moving a bit slower than a pace that I felt I could maintain for the remainder of the race. Of course, since this was my first real endurance mountain bike race, I had no true knowledge of what kind of pace I can maintain for 8 hours on a mountain bike.

The horse trails turned into singletrack; 25 miles of smooth, flowy, not-too-technical-but-still-interesting singletrack. There were few opportunities to pass, but by this point I had caught up with riders that were moving at about the same pace that I felt comfortable with. I caught sight of a guy in a Twenty20 jersey, and gradually moved by people to catch up with him. I said hello, and then passed him on a steep technical uphill where he tapped out. I would see two more people from the MD / VA area, but by the time they passed me, everyone was concentrating on the task at hand without energy to spare for greetings.

I blew through Aid Station 1 without stopping, as I had plenty of water left in my Camelback as well as most of my food. After 14 more miles of singletrack, I stopped at Aid Station 2 to refill my Camelback and to grab a quick energy gel. I think a lesson I learned from this race is that water bottles are faster than camelbacks at the aid stations - it takes a while to get the pack off (especially when you are tired), and then unscrewing the cap, filling up the bladder... well, it all takes time, and every second spent stopped is a second you are not moving forward. Efficiency in the aid stations is key.

The terrain was interesting - you could be chugging along some mellow single track for an hour, and then all of a sudden, there's a sharp left and the trail goes to a unrideable-by-mere-mortals grade for 300' straight up. Ohio doesn't have any big climbs, but take enough little rollers and 350' climbs and put them together, you get the 10,400' of climbing that my GPS recorded. For the most part, the course was not too technical (in fact, a pretty big chunk of it was on dirt roads and rail-to-trail). There were a few rock gardens and log rollers early on, but other than that the only section that sticks out in my head was one tricky descent right after the 100 mile course parted ways with the 100k course. 2 miles of fairly steep trail with these 4x4 concrete waterbars that were oil-slick with mud and were laid at an angle across the trail. If you hit it wrong, your wheels were going out from under you. Needless to say, I took this section a bit slower than necessary just to be safe. 

Around mile 55 I was starting to drag - I'd been riding for five and a half hours, and still had 45 miles left to go. Mentally, I wasn't sure how I was going to handle riding the same terrain for another five hours. However, luckily, at that point the course broke open into a long dirt road downhill section, and then we hopped on a rail-to-trail. I happily cruised along at 18mph, munching down carbs and watching the miles creep by and my average speed slowly tick up from 9.8 mph all the way up to 11 mph. The rail-to-trail eventually gave way to more roads, and before you could say "endurance mountain biking", I was at Aid Station 5.

The GPS track on the Mohican web site said that the actual course length was not, in fact, 100 miles; rather, it was only 95.7 miles. When I got to Aid 5, my GPS said I was at mile 86, and I had been hoarding my dwindling strength to hit what I was guessing to be another 14 miles of leg-sapping rolling hills. When I stopped at the station, I started to as for my drop bag but the volunteers kept saying "Just five more miles, what do you need? Water?". I had a little bit of water left in my camelback and made a split-second choice to keep moving. The barn was close enough to smell. I chased another biker into the woods and held his wheel through about 3 of the 5 miles of singletrack, both of us passing several people who looked like they were hurting. I felt great - like a third wind. Eventually the racer I was chasing dropped me, but I still kept passing people, feeling strong. 

The singletrack opened up into some jeep trails going through the campground. I blew past my car and didn't even see it, I later realized. I was going so fast, in fact, that I missed a turn and had to churn my way back up a steep hill (this lost me a place by about 10 seconds).

I rolled through the finish line with the clock at 8 hours and 17 minutes. Immediately after coming to a stop, a race staffer pushed a brown growler into my hands, and pointed behind me to a Great Lakes Brewing Company tap truck. "Go fill it up!" she said. I hobbled over to the truck and put down my bike, took off my helmet, pack, and gloves. I was done, and there was as much free beer as you wanted. I filled up a glass and then went to go look for food. I was not disappointed - the post-race meal was a pile of delicious barbecued chicken, ribs, baked beans, cole slaw, and potato salad. I ate until my mouth stopped wanting to chew, and then started the slow spin back to my campsite to pack up for the drive home.

The whole time I was riding, I kept thinking about how Jeff Schalk must have torn through these sections last year to finish in well under 7 hours. "Relax," I said to myself, "You're not Jeff freaking Schalk". The finishing times on this year's race were ridiculous - 6:38 was the winning time. Coming in an hour and a half later landed me 31st place, a result which I am happy with but think could be improved on.  Next time, I will sleep better in the days before the race. Next time I will not do a hammer ride at home two days before the race. Next time I will try a water-bottle based aid station strategy.

All in all it was a fantastic event and I can't wait to go back next year.

Garmin Data