Syllamo's Revenge 2008

I make the 400'ish mile drive up to Mountain View, Arkansas on May 02, 2008 for the 2008 Syllamo's Revenge which will be on Saturday, May 03, 2008.

I make it to the race site Saturday morning about 7:00am for the 8:00am start. It is about 48 degrees with a high expected around 70. As I start getting my bike ready, someone yells at me from across the way and I then see Jersey and Stuart, still in Jersey's car. I make my way over and talk to them for a bit. I then get back over to my bike and get it and myself ready. I meet Brady Kendall for the first time, who is parked across from me. I see Ray Porter a few minutes before the race meeting and we talk a bit. About 7:45, they have the pre-race meeting with the riders and I am pretty cold with just a short sleeve jersey on. About 8:00, the race is off.

The race starts off for about 1/5 of a mile on a paved park road and then makes a hard right turn onto a 1 mile dirt road climb at a 11 percent incline. I inspected the first hundred yards or so of the climb the previous day and found it to be washed out and rutted very bad due to flooding rains that Mt. View has experienced this spring. I knew issues would be forthcoming when 300 bikers tried to squeeze onto the climb and find their spots on the only smooth sections going up.

As we enter the very beginning of the climb, folks are hitting the ruts and washouts and wrecking, dismounting, crashing. I enter the sketchy beginning clean, just ahead of Jersey and Stuart. As I make it about 100 yards and about to pass a female rider just to my right, she hits a rut, wobbles and wrecks to her left, which happens to be where I am. She takes my front wheel out but I get my left foot down and don't fall. We get untangled with riders going every which way around us. I am now in a washout and it takes me about 50 yards of so or pushing before I can find a break in the moving congo bike line before I can jump my bike back onto the smoother line. Jersey and then Stuart passed while I was trying to get back on my bike. It is much harder to get started on a 11 percent grade that is all washed out than I realized. Anyways, I get rolling again and go at the task of climbing the road. I then feel something running down my right leg and look down to see that a package of gu I had stuck in my lycra just above my knee had busted when the female hit me. At least it wasn't blood, which I was expecting. I catch back up to Stuart and we enter the single track within a couple of bikes of each other. Jersey is gone and I think Porter is already at the first check.

Immediately, mud starts making its presence known. There are mud bogs every couple hundred yards or so. It is rideable, but soupy and muddy. On top of the mud and water, the next 33 miles or so are littered with 12 billion rocks. Big boulders, lots of large flat rocks, baby head rocks, small boulders, pea sized rocks, bowling bowl sized rocks, golf ball sized rocks. IDB is a paved highway compared to Syllamos. The rocks, every last one of them, are slick as heck. Rubber tires caked in mud and muddy wet rocks don't mix at all. Anywho, Stuart and I ride together with a group of 10 or so. I stop and help some racer looking dude out who is pushing his bike, wheelie style, along the trail. He says that he had burped his front tire flat two times already and is out of co2. I give him my inflator, he inflates his tire, thanks me and is off in a quickness. A few miles later, I ride up on racer looking dude pushing his bike wheelie style again. I ask him if he wants the inflator again, and he declines. I tell him I have 4 more cartridges plus a hand pump, and no i'm not wearing a camel of any type. He declines. again and says he is just going to make the first check and see what he can do there. Stuart and I then ride out the first leg which is about 15 miles. It took well over 2 hours to make the first check. I get a colored mark on my number plate, fill my bottles, eat some banana and orange, lube my chain, which is caked solid with mud along with my rear derailleur and roll out just ahead of Stuart. The next check point is at mile 25.
The trail is again more of the same. Lots of mud, rocks and muddy, slippery, rocky, hike a bike sections. At about mile 18 or so, I see Ray Porter coming back down the trail. I ask him whats wrong and he tells me he is finished, pulled the cleat mount out of the bottom of his shoe. He asks me why I am way back here, referring to my stellar placement at the moment, and I tell him. Anyone who might read this will have to wait for my excuse. Anyway, I head my way, slowly, and he heads his. I am now doing the math in my head and wondering if I will make the 35 mile check point. The cutoff time at check point 3 is 2:30pm. I am averaging a little over 6 pathetic miles and hour. 6 miles an hour in 4 hours will get me about 24 miles. I continue on, still drinking and eating like I should. I make check point 2 at mile 25 right around noon and get my second colored mark on my number plate. Still on my 6 mph pace. I fill my bottles, eat some fruit. Lube my mud caked chain again and roll out. I have a little over 2 hours to make check point 3 at 35 miles before the cutoff time. In my mind, I am thinking it is not going to happen.

I take off and enter what is probably the most difficult portion of the trail. Lots of mud, lots of rocks and lots of hiking for me and a group of 5 or 6 that I am riding with. We ride a little, hike a lot. After almost 2 hours of hiking and a little riding, I make check point 3 at about 1:50pm, a whopping 40 minutes before the cutoff time and get my third colored mark on my number plate. I eat some fruit, fill my bottles, lube my muddy chain, clean some mud off of the mud caked rear derailleur and take off on the next loop which is 12 miles of single track bliss.

In this section, all of the large nasty rock sections are gone as well as the mud. The trail is covered in rocks, but they are pretty much pea sized to marble sized. It has lots of rollers, that are fun to ride and nothing that is too steep. I stop and help another rider with a flat who is out of co2. I think he said this was his third of the day. I give him my inflator, he airs up and rolls off after several thanks. I continue on, which seems for ever and roll into check point 4 at around 3:50pm. It took me almost 2 hours to ride 12 miles of some of the finest single track I have ever seen. Man I was killing it.

I am now off on the last 2 miles, the first mile is some easy single track and the last mile includes going down the 1 mile climb that started this day of reckoning. As I get up over 30 mph on the downhill, I hit one of the washouts, it bounces me way left into more washouts. Somehow, I am able to slow without wrecking, gain some control and continue on. Once I get to the bottom and try to pedal, I find my chain wrapped around my pedal and crank arm. It takes me a couple minutes to get it un-twisted, remounted and then I roll on thru the finish line right at 8 hours.

Once I make it over to my car, Porter comes over and chats with me a bit and leaves. Jersey then comes over, showered, looking relaxed and beer cup in hand and tells me he knocked it out in 6:20. He studded up. He tells me the overall winner did it on a ss in 4:30 and beat the second place, who was on a ss too, by 20 minutes. I believe the third place finisher was on a ss as well. Stuart then rolls thru the finish at about 8:30.

As far as my finish and time, really don't know what happened or went wrong. I did have the flu really bad for two weeks in April and it hung around for a third week just for giggles. So much for the flu shot working. I didn't touch my bike for almost two weeks after the OC, due to being flu'ed out. I did ride a couple easy hours during the third week of April and a few hours the fourth week of April, but no intensity.

Without a doubt, this was my worst day ever on a bike, and I had a bad one at ORAMM last year. I was out almost from the beginning. I never cramped, never bonked, just did not have it. I had no power, not that I have much anyway. I spent most of the day in the middle chain ring and 34 cog or the granny and 34 cog because it was about all I could muster. Every pedal stroke required way too much effort. I suffered in a way that I have never known on a bike. In 8 hours, lots of things went thru my mind about the problem. Maybe it was the flu. Maybe I am in the wrong sport. Maybe I am not riding enough. Maybe I should take up roller blading. Maybe I should sell my bikes, not. I never thought about quitting, but thinking that I wasn't going to make the cutoff was very humbling.

All in all, it was still a good day. I never wrecked, except for falling over one time while at a dead stop around the 5 hour mark. Looked like a complete tard, but nobody was around to see. The bike did not fail me, not even the shifting, which is a miracle in its self due to all of the mud.

Later this week, I will be back on the steeds to get ready for the next round.



Peace,

s