Tahoe Sierra 100 race

Tags: Tahoe Sierra 100, mtb endurance race

• 
• 
• 

The inaugural Tahoe Sierra 100!

First, it’s great to finally have a 100 miler, part of the NUE series, with the likes of Eatough, Bishop, Tostado, Juarez et al participating, in our home state. For this Jim Northey is to be thanked, who set up a great event and put in undoubtedly countless hours of his time, as well as the amazing team of volunteers he put together: the guys and gals manning the various aid stations were especially helpful, they’d fix tires, clean and lube your drivetrain all while you’re having a snack.

Getting this thing organized becomes even more impressive when you consider the remote location. Venturing out there was almost an expedition in itself: it’s over an hour of driving from the nearest (small) town, Foresthill in the Sierra foothills, along a narrow, winding road snaking through canyons and forests, with hardly any sign of human activity or settlement, except for the road itself. A primitive campground near French Meadows reservoir, a meadow turned into a lake during a hydropower construction project in the sixties, was the staging area.

The course is a bit of a figure 8 loop (see map below) mainly consisting of jeep roads, involving lots of grueling climbs and high speed descents in truly remote parts of the Sierra Nevada just west of Lake Tahoe. Not very technical, though at times rocky and dusty. Singletrack may come next year to the course, when some political hurdles can hopefully be overcome.

My race went pretty well, I’m quite stoked to have finally completed my first hundred miler. My strategy:

• avoid crashes!
• avoid mechanicals
• keep stomach contents where they belong (I seem to be tolerating a mix of Cliff blocks, chocolate GU, Heed, water, bananas and slices of peanut butter sandwich quite fine)
• keep reserves for the climb home (and what a monster that was)
• at the end, ignore stinging pain in hands, feet, back, butt
• have visions of post-race beer & BBQ to numb the agony along the way

Did I say it was dusty? And hot? Early in the morning conditions were rather fine and mellow though. Near the start line it was fun gawking at the semi-celebrities (you can’t miss Tinker Juarez for instance) and the singlespeed pro’s who seem to have a thing with unusual facial hair patterns (it must help them spin so fast), and chatting with my fellow Joe Racer’s.

My new bike felt awesome – a 29er hardtail isn’t a bad choice on this course indeed. The first climb went over pretty well and uneventful; during the first, pretty rough descent I had to get used to the rather bone-rattling feel of a hardtail again, but the big wheels maintained great traction in the corners.

The second climb, a 1000ft affair on pretty loose and dusty terrain started to hurt a bit more, but was over soon enough. Another bumpy descent ensued and I saw people here and there suffering minor wipeouts or flats; they seemed to be doing fine though so we carried on. Next, familiar terrain: we got a second serving of that first 5 mile climb. It was hurting some more now but I was still able to middle ring it out without using my reserves (yes, heartrate monitors are useful).

Next, a 6 mile section of ‘rollers’ was up (the middle of the figure eight) – at this point they looked still innocent, and there were some great vistas along the way. A long high speed descent on fairly smooth terrain followed, and here I ran into a crash scene that luckily looked much worse that it finally turned out to be: a rider on an Ellsworth, who a few moments ago had passed me on one of the rollers, had wiped out and lay motionless on the ground. His front wheel was pretzeled and the tire was off – did it blew up during his descent? A couple others and I were trying to help out but it didn’t look good; the guy couldn’t tell his name or remember much, and his face looked to be badly messed up. We told him not to move etc (ERT training), and luckily soon one of the search&rescue guys who were patrolling the course on dirt bikes showed up. Afterwards, I was told he was flown to the hospital and it seemed he had a concussion, got stitches etc. Not good, but better than spine injury, as it looked like for a bit.

Off we took again, somewhat shaken by this tough reminder of my strategy bullet point #1. At this point, I got together with two other riders that rode exactly the same type bike, and so we formed our little Salsa Mamasita pace group for a while. The course at this point had turned in a fairly smooth, high speed, rolling dirt road and the big gear and momentum of the 29er came in handy.

A ‘RIP’ sign had been erected at the aid station at mile 69, to inform us of the impending doom that was to come upon us: the climb back to Robinson ‘Flat’. It started out as a road climb, then a gradual dirt climb that became less and less gradual. It went on and on and on, it got looser and dustier and hotter – must have been in the 90’s at this point. Luckily I had been pretty conservative with respect to hydration and was carrying a small Camelback along my two bottles. The advertized mileages of the aid stations weren’t really agreeing with the mileage on my GPS, and this section felt like it took forever. A quick break to recover and install my GPS recharge contraption and some intake of energy shots finally pulled me over to the Madcats aid station.

The ‘best’ part was yet to come though: the section towards Robinson Flat, which was by far the steepest bit of climbing of the day, in loose dirt, hot and exposed. The highlight was the teenage girls passing me on an ATV and cheering – leaving me coughing up a cloud of dust kicked up by their vehicle.

Oh well, it broke the monotony of this soul-sucking grind up. Along the way, I passed some near-corpses on bikes – made me feel a lot better to see there were others apparently much worse off.

Upon reaching Robinson, I suddenly felt a rush of euphoria (I guess at some point the mind just gets bored of being in agony), I realized I almost got it over with, and started nailing down that 6 mile ‘roller’ section again – in this direction it was more climbing than rolling, but I felt pretty good now, and even better when I reached the crest before the final descent. The rattling of that last downhill took its toll on my sore hands and feet but I blissfully rode out the final miles of pavement and rolled happily over the finish line.

Then, I headed for a dive into the lake, and grabbed some beer and food (in that order). Later, more beer, and, if my fading memory is correct, parked myself in a camping chair to watch the awards ceremonies then slowly pass out…

All in all, great fun! And I almost broke 10 hours, next time I should cut my breaks a bit shorter. No idea how on earth Eatough and co can do this in 7 hours and change though, these guys are pretty amazing, even more so the top singlespeeders who are almost as fast as the best gearies.

Update: results are online...