View from the hickory ridge fire tower looking back down the first big climb from the start
View from the firew tower looking east towards some of the later climbs on the course
Standing at the bottom looking up the 110 foot fire tower
Snowing on the gravel road heading out towards the Story Inn
Trail climb with stone pile markers
Trail goes under this tree – rideable but watch out for the standing water just on the other side
You know a race is going to be epic if the pre-ride of the course is six hours long through amazing scenery like that shown in the pics above. We drove up from Birmingham late Tuesday night, and after sleeping in I set out to ride the whole course estimating it would be five hours at most. After getting lost in the national forest a couple times and bushwhacking a bit through what I’m 75% sure is part of the course, my pre-ride ended up being nearly six hours long. I ran out of food and water with nearly two hours left – so completely ravenous and bonked for the last climb and descent. The description for the race course is perfect – mix of road, mtb, and cross specific sections. This really is the perfect finale for the ultracx series. I mainly wanted to write a blog b/c I couldn’t instagram any of my pictures during the ride … too cold! Speaking of cold, the average temp for the ride was 25 degF starting out in the teens. This was a shock to my Alabama system as we really haven’t had any cold weather yet. 20 minutes in and my nose was burning from the cold wind. 20 minutes later though and I was climbing up a 15+% hill and fine for the rest of the day – except my second water bottle was drunk as a slushy four hours into the ride. Here are the rest of the pics I got:
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- View from the fire tower looking back down towards the start
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- View looking north towards even more hills (not on the course)
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- View from the firetower looking east towards some of the later climbs on the course
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- Standing at the bottom looking up the 110 foot fire tower
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- The fire tower informational sign
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- Snowing on the gravel road heading towards the Story Inn
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- Story Inn and restaurant – this was the only “business” I saw the entire six hours. Glad it was cold so I could do the whole ride on just two bottles, although my second bottle was mostly slush – imagine drinking a slushy in the middle of a 6 hour ride in the 20s. Warms the soul right up. I kept telling myself every time I spashed into a mudhole and water splattered onto my feet that technically the water is warmer than the air.
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- Totally bunny hopped this … not! Also, I think this is past the turn for the course
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- I believe this is a section of the race course if I was following the map correctly.
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- 75% sure the race goes under this tree (either that or I was really, really lost at this point)
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- Cool water carving alongside the trail
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- Deep in the woods there were some really cool hollows
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- Rock piles marking the beginning of a long national forest climb
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- This frozen puddle is at the end of one grueling national forest climb
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- Flying flock of birds making gobbling noises, definitely not your standard canadian geese noises so I think these might have been some kind of duck
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- The last trail is a really great trail – so is trail #18 which I accidentally rode a couple miles on before realizing I was heading the wrong way. I backtracked to the trail split and took the correct trail. It was a really fun trail, too.
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- The final cyclocross barrier with about half a mile to go in the race.
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- Final ride stats 1
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- Final ride stats 2
I’m really hoping I can do this race next year. Mtb? Cross? If you had both bikes, which would you use?
If I had a cross bike I would definitely use it, but with the widest knobbiest tires you could fit on it.