Cohutta 100!

After a long wait and much anticipation, the Cohutta 100 was finally here.

Similar to the earlier races in the year, Rusty and I took off from northeast Ohio Thursday night, and rolled into the lovely Ocoee River Whitewater Center to get our packets Friday morning.

As normal with my luck, they lost my packet, and I had to wait about 45 minutes while they made me a new one, consisting of a number plate written in magic marker. PRO!

But seriously, the woman was nothing but helpful, and I'm cursed when it comes to any sort of race registration / results, so whatever.

7am Saturday morning came way too early. I dragged my ass out of bed and to my surprise. No rain! Forecasters were calling for an 85 percent chance of thunderstorms, so waking up to an overcast, but dry morning was okay with me.

Rumor had it the climb on the road out of the Whitewater Center was quick, and getting in the singletrack early was very important, so I made sure to be ready to go off the line. Lo and behold it was.

Everyone took off, and I got on a wheel and held on for dear life. My lockout on my fork happened to break earlier in the week so I bobbed my way up for 2.5 miles and entered the singletrack in the top 20.

I rode for a bit with the man, the myth, the legend, The Pflug for a bit, which was rad, and then we hit a nice rooty section that helped string people out. Over the infamous rock crossing pictured above, we were done with the first 20 miles of singletrack and on to the fire roads.

The race gets kind of nondescript this this point, as the fireroads all looked the same, tried to settle in with Tim and Rob from the 29er crew for a while and that was going well until Ernie came cruising by on a hill. Tim and Rob jumped on his wheel, and I followed suit. This lasted for about fifteen minutes, until I had the realization the race was about a quarter of the way over and there was no way I'd be able to keep up the pace. Bidding them adieu, I fell into my own pace.

Aid station two went by, and I stopped and pissed (thank god) and switched out my waterbottles. Little did I know, immediately after was the big climb of the day. The climb took you up Dally and Watson's gap, and just never seemed to end. You'd work your way up a mountain, get to the top, descend for about 30 seconds, and what do you know… another mountain to climb.

When I was getting close to the top of this climb, and saw aid station three. Life was good, but the wildcard for the day: the weather, started to come into play.

The temperature began to drop, the wind picked up, and some thick fog rolled in. Thunder was heard in the distance, and the descents became treacherous as you could only see about three feet in front of you at times.

Not much choice but to put my head down and go. And so I did.

After a fun longggggggg descent, the computer was reading 65 miles, and I was feeling good.

Then the torrential downpour started. Holy crap it was miserable. I was able to ride with some gents from Freeze Thaw Cycles in PA, and we traded pulls. They seemed to be a little less cooked or affected by the weather compared to me, so the time came when I had to drop back off of their wheels about 80 miles in.

No biggie.

I put my head down and went on, hoping to get myself out of my current misery. The clock was ticking and my window for a sub-8-hour time was coming to a close. I got to the last nine miles of singletrack in 6:45, and wasn't prepared for how bad of an absolute horror it was.

I was able to get through it the best I could, over the slippery roots and rocks, deep mud, and huge puddles, I made it to the end of the Thunder Rock Express in one piece. Rad!

What wasn't rad was the cold headwind I had to face motoring it back to the finish line. Shit that sucked.

Nonetheless, it was a drop in the bucket compared to all the suffering I had taken part in through the rest of the day, so I was able to cross the line without anyone passing me...

In 7:58. Hellllll yes! Good for 20th place in Men's open.

Awesome job to anyone who didn't instantly curl up and die when it started raining. It was miserable but a lot of people (Rusty, Kelly, Brian, Nelson, etc etc) were able to push through it.