This was my first race at the Occoee Whitewater Center in Tennessee. The Big Frog 65 dished out 8,000’ of brutal climbing in 65 miles. Driving out there was beautiful. I had been by there before a few times, but never had ridden the trails. I showed up to packet pickup Friday, and got some awesome race swag, a shirt, coffee cup and a custom pair of hand up gloves with a print for the race. I talked to Dawn from Chainbuster Racing, who was volunteering and asked if there was anything I could do before I went to dinner, and she sent me off to go ride the rhododendron trail. It’s really nice having a venue with the Ocoee running through it. This is really a nice little mountain paradise. I bumped into Doug and Terri Littrell, and Erin McMahon and hung out a little bit before heading to get dinner.

Saturday morning, I showed up and got my stuff ready. I started pedaling around and got to see a lot of my out-of-town race family from all over. It’s so great coming to events like this and seeing folks that you see all the time, but just at the races. They are a special kind of family. It was a little cooler than I expected, so I warmed up in my jacket. I saw Jason Chandler volunteering at the start line as race announcements were about to start, and he was just wearing a t-shirt. It was the perfect opportunity to ditch the jacket at the start, and got to warm my buddy up.

The race started at 8am with a 3 mile road climb before entering the trail. I felt pretty good at the start, and climbed the first mile or so before I started to pace myself, thinking about the climbing that was coming. There was some strategy talk of how the roadies would push forward on the road climb, but once we hit singletrack, they would slow up the mountain bikers behind them. I wanted to get a good spot before hitting the trail, but at the same time I wanted to focus on a pace to get me through the day. In retrospect, I could have hammered it on the road climb, and would have plenty of time to recover once I got stuck behind a long line of folks on the first singletrack loop. There was no room for passing on the majority of it. If I was just behind one person, I had no problem communicating and finding a line. But when you have a tight pack of ten or more folks ahead of you, you might as well set into their pace as opposed to try to get by each one of them.

After we finished the first loop and got onto the gravel forest road that is an out and back between the two loops, I was able to pass easily and get into my pace and race mindset. We didn’t get to far into the out and back before I noticed how steep a particular descent was. I would guesstimate it to be about an 18% grade. That was the first evil though in my head, I’m going to have to climb back up that at the end of the race. It didn’t really slow me down, it just needed to be figured into my pace to get through the rest of the day.

I packed 80oz of water and about a pound of nutrition powder into my camelbak to allow me to get to the rest stop at mile 35 before stopping. I had sent a drop bag to that stop with another pound of nutrition to refill there, and allow me to only make one stop. That rest stop was at the beginning of the second loop, and at the end at mile 57. I stopped, had a bit to eat, poured my powder into my camelback and filled it up with water. My chain had gotten nasty riding through tons of puddles, and fortunately there was a mechanic volunteering who was happy to lube my chain while I got myself together.

Shortly into the second loop I went to take a sip from my camelbak, only to realize that I had not mixed the powder in well enough. I had to stop a few miles into the second loop to pull out the bladder, and get it mixed in better. I was worried that I was not going to be able to drink through it enough to get through the second loop, and it was getting hot. I had passed my friend Erin before the rest stop, and she checked on me as I was on the side of the trail messing with my bladder. I told her what was going on, and that I was fine, and she told me that she had finally gotten her second wind so I told her to go get it, and she did. I didn’t see here again.

After the second loop, I came back through the rest stop and rode through, getting cheered on by the volunteers. When you are racing, and you are hitting your limits, you get a little outside of your head. But the encouragement of others while you are in this state is such a treasure. I started the long climb back out of the out and back, and the climbs all started with easy grades, working up to steeper pitches at the top. They were never ending, and the heat was wearing on me. I have never gotten cramps before, but I did experience something new. My legs just refused to pedal at several of the steeper pitches. I had no problem walking up them, and honestly, as I watched folks pass me, I really wasn’t losing a lot of speed. You could have a full conversation with someone coming up behind you until they left earshot.

Around mile 60, just before getting back to the first rest stop which I had rode by, I was looking at the elevation profile on my computer. Everything had started getting more and more downhill until I saw a giant red dagger spiking up. It was getting into my head a little, but fortunately it was just a glitch in the elevation data. Everything was downhill from there, so once I hit singletrack again, I started burning up all I had left.

The last stretch took me back up the rhododendron trail I rode the day before, and back in the parking lot towards the finish. There were tons of folks hanging out in the parking lot cheering folks back in. It was so nice to finish. This was a really tough race, and I was so happy to have kept my mind straight and to have persevered. After the race it was nice to have a cold beer to have Erin share her post race ritual of washing off the trail grime in the cold waters of the Ocoee. Such an epic event.