Henry Coe MTB Challenge - race

I had just come back from a trip visiting my family in Europe and was pretty jet-lagged. Westbound jet-lag means of course one wakes up at 4am not being able to sleep further and the mornings before I spent some of the idle time reading mtbr and assorted websites only to find out about this race – in Henry Coe of all places. So on saturday morning at 6am I felt unusually well-rested and decided I was ready for some unfamiliar Coe-pain – in racing mode…

The Beginner, Sport and Expert/Pro courses ended up being slightly different; Sport, which I did, was (in Kortman-annotation): Coyote Creek » Coit Road » Cross Canyon Trail » Willow Road » Crest Trail » Kelly Lake trail » Coit Road » Wasno Road » Tule Pond Trail » Grizzly Gulch Trail » Wagon Road » Bowl Trail » Lyman Wilson Trail » Hunting Hollow. The Expert course was the same except it went up Serpentine, down Steer Ridge to Wilson Camp instead of up Grizzly Gulch / Wagon. The three classes had different starting times, separated by 2 minutes each.

My original plan was to take it easy in the beginning, since I was expecting to climb Serpentine at the end which would undoubtedly be the hardest part. But since the Sport course was changed and we would take Grizzly Gulch / Wagon road instead, it ment most of the hard climbing was to be done in the first half of the race, so I decided to go full throttle from the start. Also, we would climb out of Kelly Lake using Coit Road, not Kelly Lake trail as I thought the course map on the race website originally indicated.

The initial four mile climb on Coit is very gentle for Coe standards, and I was surprised to find myself in the lead group of the Sport class and turning in first position onto Cross Canyon trail. Never been in such place, I felt pretty paranoid and about to be overtaken by a hostile horde of racers behind me, so I tackled the descent into Cross Canyon like a madman – on this trail my 29er hardtail really shined, as the extra stability and traction certainly helped me with the many loose and dusty corners. I almost ran into one of the Expert guys who was walking his bike uphill and had apparently crashed hard as he was bleeding out of his eyebrow – I quickly checked whether he was ok (yes, he was walking back to the volunteer/aid station at the top of Cross Canyon) and carried on.

I always quite enjoy the slow technical trail in the canyon, which was bone dry, and made my way to the brutal bottom part of the climb out – still surprised that nobody had caught up. I didn’t even attempt to ride up the initial wall, hiked up and spotted two expert guys. They made a perfect pacing target for the subsequent climb out of Cross Canyon and soon we found ourselves on Willow Road. Crest trail featured some more climbing, to the top of the Kelly Cabin trail, which would steeply drop us to Kelly Lake. Again, the Salsa 29er felt perfect for the steep loose stuff here and I dropped the expert guys on the descent (yay) – something which is usually not my habit. The Coit road climb out of Kelly was a grind, but not really steep, and I didn’t see a soul until I ran into the lonely volunteer at the intersection with Wasno. A quick stop to refill my bottles and on to the Wasno rollercoaster!

At some of the steep Wasno rollers I started to feel real agony (my quads verging on the edge of cramping) but I knew Tule Pond trail was near – another favorite descent of mine but at this point I couldn’t really enjoy much of it – I was happy to see Charlie here, and did my best to try generate a faint smile for his camera (not very succesfully apparently, it looks like I just came back from a visit to the dentist ;)).

(photo credit: Charlie Kortman)

On the climb from Tule Pond to Wilson Camp I was pedaling as smoothly as I could to keep the cramps away but they came back with a vengeance after having passed Wilson Camp, on those short little uphill sections on Bowl trail one usually wouldn’t even notice. At this point, the Beginners, Sport and Expert courses coincided again and I ran into some traffic.

Lyman-Wilson trail does indeed have a nice and friendly face, I thought while zipping down the Wall at high speed instead of the crawl up one usually undertakes there. At the bottom of the descent, suddenly two guys who seemed to have come out of nowhere passed me; Experts I thought, but to my horror one of them had the yellow ‘Sport’ number plate. I tried to sprint and beat them over the (dry) creek crossings just before the finish line, but there were those cramps again, so I had to let them go. Luckily, it turned out the yellow tagged Sport guy had upgraded and was doing the Expert course, so I could claim victory after all ;). At the finish I had to wait over five minutes ironing out the cramps before I could lift my leg high enough to get off the bike…

The after-party was fun – no beers or Bloody Mary’s or outrageous post-mtb beverages but plenty of food and friendly folks. I thought the race was organized pretty well, the course properly marked, I think only two folks had semi-serious crashes but without real harm, and lots of people that have never been in Coe before seemed to have had a good time here.

Full results are up on the event site .

Discussion thread on mtbr.com.

Charlie’s and Mudworm’s stories.