Tinglesack

This past Sunday was the semi-annual Mike’s Metric Mountain Mash or MMMMmmmm for short. It’s a 100k mountain bike ride on some of mid-coast Maine’s finest trails which basically means 100k of very challenging double track, bits of singletrack and some short road connectors. Despite the fact that there is very little singletrack, it is always a good time. It’s a semi supported ride with food and water stashed in four strategic locations along the route and finish time is usually expected to be in the 8.5-9.5 hour range depending on many factors including allowing time to nurse ailing bikes and bodies. Because of the layout of the route, there are many possible bail-out points for anyone who finds themselves over their heads, cramping excessively etc. A typical year will have an attrition rate of between 25 & 50%. This year we had a total of five guys show for the punishment ahead.

We rolled out at an easy pace at 8:30 after some delish egg sammiches and some anti-smack talk (you know the type “I’ll probably be slow today, my culo is sore” etc.). It was a much more comfortable pace that what was set two years ago (the last time I did this ride) because the two young-uns weren’t there to push the pace early and then crumble mightily and slow the pace later. Despite the easy pace, I often found myself towards the back of the pack for the first couple of hours while waiting for my legs to wake up and began to wonder if my pre-ride anti smack was actually true. By about hour 4, after our second snack stop, I finally began to feel ok and started riding in the front and pushing the pace a bit. Not enough to crack the pack but enough to get us somewhat back on track time wise. This was about the time that I also started to feel the flow of the bike and was able to let it do the work for me on the very rocky, rooty, leave strewn downhills. I was finally having fun.

By about hour 6, I was feeling so good that I started whooping it up and jumping anything remotely resembling a ramp sometimes getting as much as 6” of mad air! I gotz the skillz yo! Unfortunately, this was also around the time that two of the riders in the group really started to feel the mileage so we were forced to slow the pace a bit and re-group more often.

As hour 8 crept up on us, I was still feeling like a million bucks and it was beginning to look like the two bonkers were going to pull through and finish strong so after our final rest stop I hit the road planning to put the hurt on for the final leg of the ride. 1 ½ hours later, the group arrived at our departure point tired but happy with a long, hard, fulfilling day in the saddle.

Our overall time at 9:45 was a bit slow because of a couple of nice mechanicals, the bazillion leaves covering every nasty root that lay in our paths and probably some overly long brakes but this isn’t really a test of speed so much as just a nice long ride with good guys. I suspect with 2-3 like minded riders and only one refuel stop, we could complete the same route in roughly 6-7 hours and as a matter of fact, I may just suggest that to Mike sometime and see what we can do.

mucho pics to follow.