Rockstar Trail 270 - Day 2
Welcome back, party peopleeeeeee. So, I left off at Confederate Breast Works, starting day 2. I think I had half of a cold, smashed cheesy bean n' rice (CBR) from Taco Bell and a honey bun for breakfast, which was not nearly enough calories for the deficit I was already in. Marty and I got rolling at about 6:30am, headed just across the Shenandoah Mountain Highway to hike our bikes up a super steep service road to start the approximately 20 mile section of single track which was the Shenandoah Mountain Trail.
It basically runs the ridgeline of the Shenandoah Mountain range, but skirts around to the side of the knobs (high points along the range) as opposed to going up to each top. This gives the trail a largely off-camber profile. There was more HAB scattered throughout the trail as well. Some sections were extremely rocky and technical and others were smooth and flowy. And it didn't take long to heat up. The humidity was high and we were glistening with sweat within 30 minutes of our start!
At "the end" of the SMT, we descended down to a gravel road and took a short break. This, in fact, was NOT the end. We went right across the road and hiked our bikes straight back up some more painfully steep single track and started riding. It had taken us 4 hours to do that last section and now it was just before noon and the sun was beating down on us. Unfortunately for us, this last few miles of trail, before descending off the mountain down to the Cowpasture River, kept hitting knobs with gradients that had to be in excess of 25% or more, so difficult to push our bikes up, and so slow going! We were dying! It finally came to an end with a steep, leafy descent, on a trail laden with deadfall, that looked like it hadn't been used in years and was even hard to follow. We came to a small stream just before the bottom where we grabbed some water for our bottles and poured some all over ourselves to cool down, then got on the pavement to the crossing of the aforementioned river.
Once at the river, we left our bikes on the side of the road and hiked down under the bridge. We had full intentions of getting in the cold, gently rolling water but once down there, in the shade, there was a nice breeze and we were cooled off, so we didn't feel like messing with it. This was where I realized that it was noon and the camp store at Douthet State Park closed at 6pm. We were at mile 98 and the park was at mile 130. Thirty two miles to get there. Now, on any other route, 6 hours to go 32 miles would be an ample amount of time. However, I knew we had a daunting climb/HAB ahead and that there was no way I'd make it before they closed. This represented a real problem for food for me. Marty, on the other hand, hand plenty of food for himself. The resupply 20 miles past Douthet, in the town of Covington, would take another 4 hours from Douthet, so it wasn't even close to an option.
At this point, I kind of broke the rules in order to survive and get the route finished. Marty had spoken to a friend and just told him my predicament. He didn't specifically ask for help but rather just informed him. More on that later. For the time being, we had something like a 10 mile section of pavement in the middle of the day in the blistering sun with no cloud cover!
Marty is similar to me in that he doesn't do well in the heat. It just completely zaps his power and spikes his HR. He actually seemed worse than me. I thought I was about to lose him to the grips of heated death when we came upon a church and decided to look for a spigot. Jack pot!!! Ice cold water for a much needed cool down!
We rolled out of the church to finish the pavement, now feeling a bit more lively. A few more miles and we turned left onto a gravel road to make a short climb then descend to our next trail which was named Little Mare Mountain Trail. No, you're wrong, it's not an equine reference, but rather just short for nightmare. Boyyyy did sound that promising.
We had heard all about Little Mare and how it was 4, or 5, or maybe even 7 miles of HAB. Basically, we started this perpetual climb at 1700' elevation and would end at a fire tower that was at 4200'. After an hour or two of mostly pushing our bikes with a few sprinkles of riding here and there, we stopped to cool down and eat/drink. There weren't any leaves on the trees so there was minimal shade to hide us from the suns penetrating rays of light. I opted to lean against a large tree directly in it's shadow and then noticed how much salt I had on my jersey. Depletion!!!!
This is the trail
After 2 to 2.5 hours of this, it turned downhill, briefly, into a really technical descent and traversed a nasty rock garden, before turning back up some insanely steep HAB. Once over the top of that, we descended down to Trappers Lodge and started the gravel ascent further up to the ridgetop Ingalls Field airport.
Rock garden traverse, no real line to be found
We passed the airport and hit a short bit of pavement up to a service road which took us up to the fire tower. We climbed up the fire tower, which felt a little sketchy with the wind whipping fiercely in all directions. We were just a bit early for sunset; I think it was about 8:00, which meant it took us 5 hours from the time we turned onto Little Mare, and totaled 14 miles.
The airstrip is directly behind me
Eastward from the fire tower
Westward from the fire tower
From the fire tower, it was time to head downhill on a service road to Sandy Gap where we'd skirt a fence and drop some sweet single track through a prescribed burn area. However, we still had to navigate about a 20 minute section of HAB in the middle of the descent. The first half of the descent was crazy fast; I was following Marty and we were ripping! The charred black earth along side the trail still smelled of burnt wood and Marty's tires were kicking up ash into the air causing my eyes to itch and water but, who cares!?!? Fun flowy fast freaking single track!!
The short HAB; I wish pictures did steepness justice
We rolled into Douthet around 9pm. As we rolled through the campground, we saw Marty's friends at a campsite and stopped to chat and eat some food, which they gave us. The rules are that you can't take outside support but you can take trail magic if it's randomly offered by someone. In my opinion this was closer to breaking the rules than trail magic but I was honest and notified the race director and he said we can just chalk this up to trail magic. Thanks Rob!
After hanging with them for a bit, it was off to the showers to get cleaned up and then to try to get some sleep. I was so excited about a hot shower! I chose 1 of 4 showers, turned the water on, only to realize it was just lukewarm and any part of me not being directly hit by the water was cold. I didn't have a towel so I had to use a t-shirt to dry off with, as I shivered violently. It was only after I'd controlled the rigors that I realized the ancient white metal box on the wall was a heater that I could have cranked up for a toasty shower experience. Of course it was, ugh. Whatever, I gathered my things and headed out to find the campsites that VES had booked for racers to use.
Once outside, we saw Zoe, who we'd met as we passed through Braley Pond Campground the evening before. She let us know she was the only person at campsite 13 so that's where we headed to set up our tent and bivy.
I should also mention that I bring a pair of flip flops with me on these races, and I keep them on top of the seat bag behind me with the straps of the bag across the top, holding them in place. To my dismay, I found only one flip flop upon my arrival to the showers. So, of course I was walking around with one bike shoe and one flip flop on. I'm not going to throw one perfectly good flip flop away!
For this trip, with the blazing daytime highs and mild nighttime lows, after much back and forth, I had decided to leave the sleeping bag at home and just take a thin bag liner and layers to wear, like leg warmers, thin jacket, beanie, and a dry fit short sleeve base layer. Now, I don't know how much ultra endurance stuff you have done, but it's not just the temps to consider. As most people would attest to, after 15+ hours on the bike, with dehydration and fatigue and overall body breakdown, it can be 75 degrees outside and these uncontrollable shivers will set in intermittently throughout the night. You don't really feel "cold" but you do feel cool and the shivers just come and go, but more violent than a normal "I'm chilly" shiver. This, coupled with the fact that it felt like it did actually get colder than forecasted, likely because we were in the mountains next to a lake, caused me to feel pretty dang cold in the middle of the night. I couldn't sleep. I was miserable. What to do? What to do? Ah! My rainfly for the tent was just over there on the ground by my bike, chilling, doing absolutely nothing. I grabbed it and cocooned myself in it, still inside my bag liner as well. And it worked! It held heat in so well. Yea it held moisture when over my head too, creating a sauna, but that's ok, I dealt with it.
With it feeling significantly colder, Marty and I were slow to emerge from our dwellings. I don't think we were rolling on the bikes until 8:30 to start day 3. But I think I'll leave you here as this ended up quite a bit longer than I had anticipated...shocker, I know. Thanks so much for reading, if you've made it this far. Day 3 was a 20 hour day so the next installment should be pretty good, with several awesome sections, a detour for some foot care, a couple of crashes within a 5 min period, and a small meltdown at 2am on the steeps of Price Mountain! Oh, and maybe more to come in flip flop saga!
By the numbers: Day 2 took 14.5 hours to go about 55 miles and a little over 10,000' of elevation gain.
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