Boggs Mountain pre-ride report + some tips for the race

Great ride yesterday – it was absolutely perfect conditions up at Boggs!

For those who weren’t there, Jeff and I did about 3 hours of riding up at Boggs, covering about 16 miles, and with about 1600 feet of climbing total. We didn’t know the exact route, since it is not announced yet, but we covered territory that is “similar” to previous years.

Here is a GPS recording of our ride: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7761107

I’m sure Jeff will have more to add, but here are some impressions I took away:

General riding conditions are excellent – nicely cut single track or fairly wide smooth fire roads. There are about 40 different trails that criss-cross the mountain, most of which are graded as Intermediate.

Like other XC courses, there are some pretty serious climbs. In my case, I had to get off an walk a couple of them, though Jeff was able to ride everything.

None of the climbs covers more than about 200-300 feet, although we did manage to find a 900 foot climb at one point! Based on past years, I don’t THINK this will be in the race.

Technically, there isn’t too much difficult stuff, though there are a LOT of rocks, baby-head size, all over many of the trails. We found one especially difficulat trail right at the start of our ride, but didn’t see anything else like it, and don’t expect they will use it on the race.

Trails are soft but not muddy. I was using Nevegals and they seemed to work fine. Much of the “flat” single-track will be pretty fast, and a good carving front tire is going to be an asset here.

In terms of the race, some things to consider:

Doing four laps of this is likely to be one of the hardest things any of us, except perhaps Jeff, has done to date. Just doing one lap will take a lot out of you, and by the fourth one comes around, it’s going to feel pretty brutal. Also, it requires a lot of attention as you are often dodging trees, boulders, or overhanging branches. That will be tough late in the afternoon.

It’s COLD there in the morning – it was 37 when we arrived at 10 AM, and likely closer to freezing when the race starts. We saw SNOW on the ground and a couple of the trails we had to ride through a few inches of it!

Bring LOTS of layers – I had four layers on top, with shorts + legwarmers – just about right for the start, then too much later – you will want to put on and take off stuff throughout the day. And when you stop, it gets cold, so you’ll want to also bring a warm jacket and jeans to put on over cycling clothing while you wait your turn to ride. I think bringing some inexpensive blankets to wrap up in during the morning would be a good idea as well.

Bring LOTS of water – there is NO water there, and the altitude (about 3500 feet) plus the cold can dehydrate you faster than down here. We need to bring at least a gallon of water per person to cover the whole day.

Bring eye protection – there is a lot of debris on some of the trails, which will be kicked up by other riders you are following, plus there are overhanging branches which WILL smack you in the face (how do I know this?). The light on the trail is quite variable from full sun to full shade, so bring medium darkness (or photochromic) lenses.

Make sure your derailleurs are in perfect shifting condition – this is constant shifting territory, and you will be depending on quick shifts to get by others that are struggling. It will make a difference when you need it most.

Tire pressures can be fairly soft. If you have tubeless, this is the course for you! I think I was running about 28-30 and it felt perfect. A little bit of “squish” worked well on these forest trails. Think Tenderfoot plus pine needles.

No big downhills but lots of fast XC that sweeps and flows up and down – the good bike handlers should be able to pick up a lot of time in those areas. Reading the trail requires a lot of concentration because of the twisty nature of it and in some places the trails were almost invisible, though Jeff and I think they are not going to be used in the race. It seemed like the trails for the race may be much easier to spot (they’ll have to do that, we think).