This past weekend I was able to join some friends in Fayetteville, TN for this year’s
Dirt Sweat and Gears – “the south’s premier 12 hour mountain bike shindig”. This was a first rate event and from talking with some of the promoters, we could see this event become the east side’s
Sea Otter one day. They already have SSUSA the night before main event which we missed but sounded hilarious. It was a 3-stage battle for the singlespeeds… a 2 lap race where the top 20 went on to a hill climb time trial and then the top 8 had to joust American Gladiator style to decide the overall winner. We did make it in time to set up camp before dark and for the viewing of
Klunkerz and a few pre-race ‘sports beverages’. We hit our tents around midnightish under a light and intermittent sprinkle - the radars were calling for severe weather.
I wake up around 2AM to talk a short walk into the woods and it is still barely sprinkling. The wind was intense and I couldn’t get back to sleep as I was just waiting for the sky to open up. Still awake and at approximately 3:47AM, the storm hit hard. I was able to squeeze in a couple more hours of sleep and woke up before my alarm at 6:30AM. It’s still raining! We make it over to the pancake breakfast and grab coffee and then it was time to get the bikes ready to roll.
The rain stops at 8:30AM and everyone is wondering what the trails would be like. It was super wet!! I was racing with
Faster Mustache and we were fielding two 2 man teams (FasterMustach:Brobots, FasterMustache:YallBros). My Brobots teammate, Aaron (A-Ron Burgundy), wanted to try his legs at the lemans start and I was more than happy to watch. I’ve run the past two lemans starts for whatever team I was riding with and it was going to be fun to watch the action this time. At this point we did not realize how epic this first lap would be. Everyone runs, finds their bikes, and rides off into the woods. That was the last we saw of all of the racers for a long time…. The pros still weren’t back from their first lap and over an hour had passed. Finally, the riders start to trickle in. Many of the riders were running next to their bike and completely covered in mud. There were tons of missing derailers and wheels that wouldn’t roll. I was waiting for my teammate so that I could take off on my first lap and hearing the stories coming out of the woods was making me pretty concerned. I’m starting to see riders come through who I would have expected Aaron to have been in front off and I’m really starting to wonder if he is ok. I’m still waiting at the 2 hour mark and then I see him coming towards the timing tent. He makes a last effort and actually wipes out right in front of the tent to the delight of Bruce Dickman (race announcer extraordinaire). We bump nucks and I’m off for Brobots lap #2! It turns out that Aaron’s tire selection was not ideal for the thick muddy conditions… he had to stop every 50’ to pull mud from between the tire and chainstays just to get the bike to roll. Miserable.
I’m very concerned about how this lap is going to go. We were probably in last place for the 2 man teams and I’m looking at a potential 2 hours of muddy hurt… I’m sliding all over the place but feeling pretty good. I was having fun with it and passing a ton of people. I might have made it into the second mile and halfway up the first long slippery climb… people are struggling up the center and muddiest part of the trail so I decided to hug the right side of the trail. I’m passing folks up the climb and then my rear tire blows out – I can only guess that I ran over a sharp root or something. My rear tire deflates within a couple seconds and I’m stuck and then I realize that I had left my blowout kit at camp!! I start to panic and I’m not sure what to do. I hate to ask anyone for help during a race and I seriously start to walk back down the hill and wonder if I’m even allowed to walk backwards on the course and cancel the lap. It was going to suck to walk the remaining ~9 miles in the thick mud while pushing a bike. Luckily, this festival and race had brought the nicest and most generous of racers... A couple people stop to give me a tube, tire levers, two CO2s and a cartridge popper. I tell them where my tent is so that they can get their gear back and they go on their way. My tube change took forever and I’m feeling demoralized. I finally get on the bike and start to ride – hard. I pass most of the folks who asked me if I was ok while changing my flat and then I passed both of the riders who provided me with their spare gear. I was feeling better now. Then I come across Neal from FasterMustache:YallBros who is on the side of the trail with a broken chain. Of course I’m no help considering I left everything at camp, but I was able to track down a chain tool from a rider up ahead and Neal was finally getting some help. I finish my lap with about 17psi in the rear and Aaron is off on lap 3 for the Brobots.
At this point the sun breaks through and the winds are helping to dry out the trails. Our lap times kept getting quicker as the trail continued to improve. I checked our placement after 4 laps and we were in 12th place (out of 20). It was time to turn it on if we were going to finish in the top 10. We kept ramping up the pace and we were able to finish 6th and only 1 minute and 40 seconds behind 5th. I was happy with my lap times once I realized that all of my non-flat laps were less than 1:05:00 with my final lap putting our team with the second fastest team lap of the 2 man teams (the first place team had several really fast laps). It was finally time for the free BBQ dinner and some cold beers.
We watched the pros (Tinker Juarez wins!) and the super fast on the podiums. They raffle off a ton of frames and complete bikes and Gary Fisher is there to personally hand out the Fishers. The entire event was well run and an absolute blast. I will definitely be back next year!
Dirt Sweat Gears '08 - RESULTS
Brobot Laps
Clay Higgin’s (landowner/race promoter) photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/clayhiggins/DSG2008
