Before Sunday’s ORAMM mountain bike race in the Pisgah National Forest, I’d heard it said that some people who have done the race never got on a mountain bike again. I’d also heard of those who barely survived ORAMM, yet couldn’t wait to do it again.
After doing the race, I can understand both sentiments, though I will admit the latter didn’t begin to take hold until well after the race as I lay grime-coated and spent in my tent.
ORAMM stands for Off Road Assault on Mount Mitchell, a nod to its paved and better-known cousin, Assault on Mount Mitchell, a 103-mile road race that begins in Spartanburg, S.C., and ends atop Mount Mitchell. ORAMM starts in Old Fort and and takes a circuitous 63-mile route north into the Black Mountains and back. Maybe five miles is on paved road (mostly getting out of and back into Old Fort); the rest is on gravel Forest Service road and singletrack trail. There’s 11,000 total feet of climbing along the way, and the event’s Web site advises: “Do not underestimate the extreme difficulty and danger of this event. The course is extremely demanding and travels over rugged terrain with extreme elevation changes. … It is not uncommon to see wildlife such as a wild cat or a black bear. Be ready to cope with any circumstances!! Please note that firearms are not permitted in certain areas.”
Not surprisingly, the folks who attempt such a challenge look like they don’t mind a little extreme difficulty and danger, or bear wrestling, for that matter. Checking out my 500 or so competitors at the start I saw maybe 5 pounds of fat — combined. Just looking at the race field it would be easy to be intimidated. And yet spend 10 hours and change riding 63 miles through bear country with them and you come away with a broader appreciation of who would chose to spend a Sunday riding through the highest mountains on the East Coast.
At the start, I ran into Steve Rogers from Chapel Hill. Steve and I are both in our 50s and I see him at every race in the Triangle. He’s a more devoted rider than I am and better because of it. He’s competitive, sure, but when he heard a couple weeks back that I was doing ORAMM, he emailed me some valuable and helpful advice from his experience racing in the mountains. Sunday before the start he attempted to put my prerace jitters at ease.
“Ah, you’ll have a fun day.” I’m pretty sure he meant it.
Fifteen miles into the race, at the first rest stop, I ran into Andrew Katz. Andrew is a managing partner of Morrisville’s Triangle Rock Club (a sponsor of this blog) and may be the most adventure-driven person I know. His specialty is mountaineering, but he’s also an accomplished whitewater kayaker, scuba dives, runs marathons and triathlons and does adventure races. He broke his arm doing the latter last year, which has limited his time on the mountain bike: “I’ve ridden exactly twice in the last year,” he told me. Yet despite having no chance of besting his previous ORAMM record of just over 8 hours, he may have been the happiest guy on the course.
“It’s such a great day!” he said.
As I was hitting the 30-mile mark around 12:30 p.m., if occurred to me that the top riders were just now finishing. Done — and I still had more than half the race left. Then I passed a guy walking his bike up a gentle climb.
“Cramps?” I asked.
He nodded solemnly. Cramps — and he still had 33 miles and most of that 11,000 vertical feet to go.
A couple miles later I was also pushing my bike, up the endless Curtis Creek Road to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I passed a fellow pusher who complimented me on my prowess. “Practice,” I advised. A little later I passed a kid in his 20s pushing his bike but mostly using it for support. “I think I ate some bad Gu,” he said, his sweaty, helmeted head facing the ground. “Save me a drink when you get to the rest stop,” he requested.
Around 2:30 the inevitable summer afternoon thunderstorm moved in. We had just left Rest Stop #4, on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where the race route spends a mile before exiting onto the aptly named Heartbreak Ridge Trail. Drizzle at first, then, as we pushed our bikes up the quarter-mile climb up Heartbreak, the rain picked up. At the summit, several of us stopped. One guy who had done ORAMM before, began telling a story.
“My dad did a marathon when I was little,” he began. “The farthest he had run until then was 8 miles. When he finished he told my mom that if he every talked about running another marathon, she needed to tell him no. Well, a year later the same marathon rolled around and my dad said, ‘You know, I think I’ll do that marathon again.’” He paused. “I guess I’m destined to repeat my father’s mistakes.”
On the rocky, rooty drop down Heartbreak Ridge, the clouds let loose. An already technical trail was now slippery and, in spots, consisted of peanut butter mud. A half mile down I passed a couple sitting on a rock. I didn’t think much of them until a little while latter and another rider asked if I’d seen the two. “Man, she was crying. I think the descent was freaking her out. I don’t know how it wouldn’t freak you out if you weren’t an avid downhill mountain biker.”
I rolled into Rest Stop # 5, the last rest stop at 4:20 p.m..
“How much farther?” I asked.
“About 11 miles from here,” answered the aid station volunteer.
“And it’s mostly downhill?”
“It’s six and a half back up to Kitsuma, then it’s downhill.”
Kitsuma is a legendary climb that greets ORAMM racers about five miles in and spanks their behinds with five miles to go. There are 13 switchbacks to the top, all 26 (13 x 2), I walked. I did the first 13 under the pretense of maybe being able to ride one. There was no pretense the second time around. After reaching the summit, I climbed back on the bike, only to discover that more sore than my legs were my arms and shoulders, which had taken a severe beating jolting down Heartbreak Ridge. It was here that I could understand why someone might entertain a Craig’s List ad after getting back to Old Fort. Instead, the first thing I did after crossing the finish was get my beer chits and cash one in on a Ranger IPA. I sprawled out on the grass, took a sip and, I believe, took a short nap.
Category Archives: Competition
Busted, but not broken
Optimism. It may be the most important weapon in my training arsenal.
Yesterday, I was at Bruegger’s, bragging to my buddy Jason about how durable my mountain bike has been. About how it began life as an aluminum-frame Trek Fuel 70 a decade ago. About how it’s gone through three frames and how I’ve replaced, from wear, everything but the handlebars (I don’t ride hard, but I do ride a lot). We’ve been quite happy together, my Trek and I. Knock on wood? Bah! The notion seemed insincere.
Two hours later I was standing on a remote section of a remote trail staring at my rear shock absorber hanging from the frame’s broken seat tube. Not a time for debilitating pessimism.
I wasn’t overly concerned because Trek has been good in the past about honoring the lifetime frame warranty. In the past, Trek has been great about replacing the frame under the lifetime warranty. It’s not, however, an overnight process; the last time the frame broke there was an aluminum shortage and it took nearly two months to replace — which they did, with highly-coveted and significantly more expensive carbon.
Pardon me for a moment for a quick sermon. I bought the bike from The Spin Cycle, a shop that epitomized customer service and supporting the cycling community. When we bought our house in Cary, I can’t deny that it’s proximity to The Spin Cycle (2.3 miles) was an influencing factor. I bought three bikes from the shop, and every time I tried to do my own maintenance and repairs, they were always there to fix my mess (with nominal commentary). When I broke my frame the last time and it was apparent there would be a longer-than-normal wait, they gave me a loaner. When I opened the email on a cold January day in 2009 announcing The Spin Cycle was closing, I rushed over to offer my condolences. (And, I should note, get a great going-out-of-business deal on a headlamp.) I’ve continued to support — and benefit from — The Spin Cycle’s lineage. I take my bikes to Spin Cycle wrench Matt Lodder, who went on to start the Cycle Surgeon, and after getting my broken bike out of the woods and onto the car rack Monday, I took it to the Trek Bicycle Store in North Raleigh, owned by former Spin Cycle manager Jeff Roberts. Cyclists like me who need a strong support network, which describes the majority of us, wouldn’t be riding were it not for local bike shops. Think about that the next time you go online to save 50 cents on innertubes. Amen.
My only concern, standing there Monday with my crippled cycle? (Make that my main concern; there was still the matter of finding my way out of an unmarked trail network, then covering five miles on gravel forest road back to the car.) I have a race in less than two weeks and, a) this was supposed to be my last week of hard training (a week I desperately need) and b) I, um, was now short a bike.
Deep breath.
I knew I wouldn’t have my bike back in time for the race, which is in 11 days (though I was pleasantly surprised to later learn that the bike, new frame and all, would be ready in two weeks). No, problem, I thought, I’ll just borrow my stepson’s (a Gary Fisher niner, a hardtail but lighter and faster than my ride). It didn’t matter than Ben’s bike needed some work and probably wouldn’t be back from the aforementioned Surgeon until Friday at the earliest: I could still get in some vital training miles on my road and cyclocross bikes. And it didn’t even matter that it’s supposed to rain all week because — and this, I’ll admit, is pushing my optimism — I have a trainer. A couple of two-hour sessions on that thing will make anything, even the Off Road Assault on Mount Mitchell, the race I’m training for, doable. And really, with my skill set and physical set up, doable is plenty fine.
Optimism. It may not trump training, but from what I’ve heard about the challenge of ORAMM I best bring it with me to the start.
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This weekend: Plunge, scope, run
It’s another diverse weekend in North Carolina: Take a preseason plunge into the chilly Atlantic, run up a quartzite monadnock, or spy on your feathered friends (in the name of science).
Coast
Here’s a good opportunity to see just how sturdy your cardio is: The 8th Annual Special Olympics Polar Plunge Saturday at Carolina Beach. Picture yourself at the Le Mans-style start, you in your fetching bathing suit making a mad dash for the 51.3 degree waters of the Atlantic — all in support of Special Olympics. Related festivities — live entertainment, costume contest, auction, food, drawings for prizes — start at 11 a.m., the plunge takes place during the heat of the day, at 3 p.m. (air temperatures around 60 are forecast).
A race, a report
In my life as a guidebook writer, I frequently find myself returning from a scouting expedition and conducting a topopsy. That is, I get out the appropriate topographic map for where I’d been and try to figure where and how I got lost. It’s a helpful exercise. It sheds light on how I might help others avoid making the same mistake. And, to a lesser degree it turns out, helps me avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
Competitive spirit: No regrets
“I’m thinking about doing Georgia this year,” Alan said midway through our weekly 18-mile mountain bike ride at Umstead early yesterday morning. He said it wistfully, and punctuated it with a sigh.
The mention of Georgia a month into the new year was a trial balloon of sorts for Alan. Not so much to gauge my reaction; rather, for him to think out loud about what Georgia really meant.