The Mohican 100 is one of my favorite NUE events. The singletrack is super fun, the course is pretty interesting and it's not too far away. I've done this race for the past few years including the Mud-hican of 2010. Previously I have always raced with gears here, but this year I decided to ride my singlespeed for a change and it would provide a built in excuse if I went extra slow.
Friday morning I met up with Pat Blair, Jed Prentice and Mike Tabasko and carpooled to Loudonville. Once there we pre-rode what would be the first and last 4 miles of singletrack. As we finished our ride some dark clouds rolled in and shortly after a huge downpour fell...I was getting a little worried about conditions for the race! We went straight to dinner and each ordered a whole pizza for ourselves and some more rain fell while we finished our beers. Back to the room we mixed bottles, lube chains and made final preparations for the race.
Up at 4am, breakfast, bathroom, more food, bathroom and before I knew it I'm lined up on the starting line. I lined up in the second row knowing that it's tough to maintain position on the slight downhill through town. I narrowly avoided a big wreck right in front of me that took down both Jed and Mike (who both would go on to finish the race, Mike coming in 4th Open) As soon as we hit the huge wall coming out of town, I started going backwards. I went so f'ing slow up this hill, it was ridiculous...I was really worried about the next 95 miles at this point. I could see a huge stream of riders ahead of me and I must have been in 200th place hitting the singletrack.
Everyone jockeyed for some position and things started to spread out. The trails were wet and slippery, but not messy. I was having a ton of fun cruising the slick trails and it wasn't long before I started picking riders off. Despite my terrible start I realized that I was riding pretty well and decided to go with it. I spent the entire first 30 miles of singletrack catching and passing riders, no one passed me. I really had no idea where I was in the SS race or even the overall, but I knew that I had caught a lot of singlespeeds and was pretty sure at this point that I was top 10 SS. Just before aid station 3 I caught Cheryl Sorenson, so I knew that I had moved up pretty far as she is usually in good position and our finish times are often very close.
Just after aid 3 is the biggest singletrack climb of the day and I got a pretty solid gap on Cheryl and the other rider we were with. After this climb though, the only two 100 miler racers I would see for the rest of the day would be Cheryl and Masters winner Alec Petro who both caught me on the 10 mile rail trail section. Everyone has a low point during an NUE event, and the rail trail was mine. You really can only spin 32x19 so fast so it's not like you can even hammer to get it over with quickly. I was so bored that I was talking to myself out loud and practicing wheelies. After what felt like 45 hours I finally got into aid 4 at Glenmont and was on my way. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful and I was so happy to get to the final 4 miles of singletrack. The trails are dried up nicely and I still had plenty of energy to enjoy the trail. I finished the race in 8:05, 7th singlespeed and 18th overall.
