There is a very good reason why Kim waits until just before sunrise to start the race! You really need the daylight to see all the baby head rocks and navigate around, over, between them. Mistake #1: DON’T RIDE COFFEE BRANCH IN THE DARK. I made it across the street to the state park to get a selfie at the start and started rolling by about 5:18 AM with it still quite dark out. I had tried my best to be as organized as as I could even before leaving the house to go to the NICA race, but still it took me over an hour to get everything ready. I drove straight up to the Fireside Outpost after the awards ceremony and got a good night’s sleep with my alarm set for 4 AM. Abigail Marshall, Lauren Moon, and Analise Toone.
Zoomed in view of the Birmingham girls who grew up in bike racing families from when they were preschoolers. Amazing crew that makes the NICA season run so well year after year. So this is a chance to guarantee that every single NICA rider is on the podium at some point as they individually bring up each senior and recognize how many years they have been racing with NICA. Each season at the state championship race, NICA recognizes all the awards and brings them up on stage, which is so awesome for people like my daughter who just race for fun. Super busy week with a busy weekend with the first of many lasts – my daughter’s last mountain bike race as a high school student (graduating senior) happening over two days at Fort McClellan in Anniston. Will build on this table for future years! The Story Time comparisons between last year and this year. With a 3 hour penalty (very thankful for that instead of a DQ) for missing that section, my net time was 49 minutes faster this year as shown in the table below. Total extra time from just these segments: 54 minutes Also note that there were some random trees down throughout the course (maybe only a few) that required negotiating so I’m thinking total time lost to trees this year was about an hour.Īs far as overall time goes, I was 2 hours 11 minutes faster last year, but I had Garmin problems in last year’s race and had to navigate the course on my phone (somewhat unsuccessfully as I missed a short out/back to the top of Buck Bald).
Notable segments with additional trees this year. Side by side comparison of various segments noting treefall. I would roughly guesstimate about 30% more trees this year. The only way for this to be truly accurate is if I had a better count of how many trees were down last year vs how many were down this year. Not too far into the Sylco horseback trail … it took a minute to even figure out which way to go! The data – how “fast” is a tree (or lack thereof)? I think I lost my helmet light crawling under. I bushwhacked to the left (I think) This was earlier, one of hte Brush Creek trees I think. The end of Boyd Gap is literally on the other side of this tree. Much of the Forest Service resources that would normally be doing spring tree cleaning right now got diverted to the fire investigation and clean-up, which is still ongoing. Also, there was a major fire at the Ocoee Whitewater Center that completely destroyed the historic building that hosted the whitewater events for the 1996 Summer Olympics. They looked quite fresh when I arrived at them with one of them being on a wide, well-graveled forest road. I think at least one or two large trees fell either after I started the race or the night before I started the race. Why so many trees down? There has been a large number of storms (including a late winter storm) that have knocked over a bunch of trees. All-in-all, though I was happy to set a new slightly faster FKT for the course given how most of the trails and dirt roads were in great condition (except for tree-fall). Sometimes that tug you feel isn’t a pedal stuck on a branch, it might just be your pump being pulled off the frame.
Also, I lost my bike pump, presumably when dragging my bike under a tree. I lost my helmet light, presumably ripped off when pushing my way through some of the tree-fall. This didn’t really detract from the race at all – in fact solving tree navigation puzzles is something I enjoy - how do I get me and my bike around, over, under, or through these trees?!? But the increased number of trees did take a toll on both my equipment and my overall time. I’ve called it the “tree-fall” edition because there was a noticeable increase in the number of trees down throughout the course. The Three Rivers Way (Vista 300) race was awesome again this year.
Goldencheetah zoom to section download#
It’s 7500px image (width) so it may take a while to download and open: Summary Here is the link if you want to zoom in on the map above.