To start off I have to declare what an idiot I've been for not doing this race before now. You hear 46 miles and it doesn't seem too bad. This place is real!The race starts off with a mass start(352 pre-registered,294 started) with less than an eighth of a mile before the start of a nearly mile long climb up a soft gravelish road. From there almost all of it was single track.
Syllamo is located in Arkansas near Mountain View. The "hills" are much bigger than we have in Missouri and there are lots more pine trees. They have done an excellent job building these trails following the contours of the peaks and valleys. There are tons of climbs, but most are manageable. The trails are broken up into separate loops; yellow, green, blue, orange and red. We followed the outside of these loops to make one big loop.
The weekend before this race I started having symptoms of a head and chest cold. I told myself it was allergies and tried to get over it. By Tuesday I barely had a voice. I was coughing up green/yellow stuff but still wanted to go. I decided to take my own tent to sleep in so I wouldn't keep Greg and Jeremy awake or infect them. We pre-rode a little Friday and I felt OK, not great, but OK.
I'm no climber so even on a good day I wouldn't want to be at the front. So I wasn't worried about my starting position or hammering to get to the climb. I just cruised and tried to survive. I'd say I was in about 60th place at the top starting the single track. Not 5 minutes into the trail I saw the first casualty, broken chain. Soon the first steep up and off the bike we came. As far as I could see ahead of me, bikes being pushed or carried. I rode behind Scott Davis. He's the promoter for the Berryman Epic. Dude does not like it when he has to walk something he could potentially ride. We passed some other riders in the technical stuff and soon found a reasonable pace.
We came around a ridge top that had been devastated by the winter ice storm. There was barely a tree standing, looked like it had been logged. There was a small tree, say 5 inches in diameter laying flat on the ground. Would have been an easy obstacle any other day of the week. We picked up quite a bit of speed approaching it and all of the sudden Scott was over-the-bars and on his back, bike flipping through the air landing about 30 feet down the trail. I did my best to slow down but still hit the same rut Scott had hit and even knowing it was there almost did a header myself. My front wheel disappeared down nearly to the axle just when you would normally load the suspension fork to assist with the needed loft to clear the tree. I seriously thought Scott would be hurt. I've never seen anyone go over that hard, that fast. He said he was OK and told me to go on, so I did. He DNF'ed, but never heard if he went any further after his endo.
It wasn't long after that when I had my first sign of cramps. From that point on I had to nurse my leg muscles by backing off on the pedal pressure and stopping to stretch, frequently. I started to think about quitting, I mean I was barely past the 10 mile mark with 35+ miles to go! With it happening that early I knew it wasn't nutrition, it had to be over exertion from being sick. I had come too far to quit yet so when I came to the first checkpoint I decided to go some more. I knew we came right by this same point after riding the green loop. I drank a ton, used my gears to my advantage and lowered my heart rate. I started feeling a little better.
Now in survival mode, I just wanted to try and finish. I had no idea what the remainder of the trail had in store for me but pushed on clicking away at the miles. I was still having a blast riding all of the rocky, ledgey stuff. I was also having major issues with chainsuck. Not only while shifting, but whenever I applied much power. It seemed like if the trail stayed dry and the chain had time to "clean" itself, it got better. I was off walking a bunch of stuff that I would normally ride. May have done me some good, a little walking.
I soon came up on the last check point which was the start of the red loop. I knew this was supposed to be the fastest and most flowing section, but I had forgotten how long it was. If I had been fresh I would have mashed this thing out like nothing. Too bad I was on my last leg. There was very little descending and required near constant pedaling. This made it hard for me and brought on more cramps. I must have stopped 20 times on this loop if only for a few seconds each time to stretch. I was watching my elevation and had noted what it was at the check point knowing that I would be returning to that same spot. It gave me and idea of when I would finish the red loop, I was that desperate.
A quick fill of a bottle and I was back in the woods on the last leg of the yellow loop. I didn't think it was very far and I was right. One little bump and I popped out at the top of the climb that started all of this craziness. Mach 5, a near miss on the way down and I was done.
If you had asked me right after if I would do it again I might have said no way. Now, I can't stop thinking about next year. Dwayne rode looking for his own revenge and finished in just over 5 hours for the win. He was over 24 minutes ahead of second place. Fuhrmann, Zach and Gino with a flat, were right there. Matthews took a header but still rode well and Ploch stayed with John. I lost at least half a dozen spots on that last loop to finish in 22nd. I'm happy to have finished and know that there was some awesome competition. Only 132 riders finished and several were taken to the local hospital and hopefully are doing fine.
