Tookie's Black Bear Beat Down.

 

 

Back to back brutal race weekends, that started with the Blackbear 40K in West Virginia, noted to be one of the most dangerous XC courses here in the East. The race is easy to describe... You climb rock you descend rock, you climb rock, descend rock, repeat for the next 40K and add in a little rain just before the race and two more showers during the race, makes for a long day.
So then the next weekend should be no problem..... Yeah right. Lets drive the twelfth pin in the coffin with a 8 hour adventure race at Greenbo State park in Kentucky (this is in my backyard) and they had me trekking around to places I'd never seen before. The race started out great on the bike leg which  

 

Only took a little over a hour to complete the first leg, my teammate and I were in 3rd place heading into second leg which was a combination of kayaking and trekking.. Very long story short, we got turned around on one check point and lost 40 minutes, ran out of amino vital because the leg was so long, stung by a yellow jacket, cramping from dehydration. So 6 hours later we returned to the transition to get back on the bikes to try to pick up our last 3 CP in less then an hour. No such luck two miles into the leg my teammate snaps his chain (not a KMC) so we fix that leaving very little time to make the 8 hour cut off, only picking up one CP on the leg and leaving two open. We roll in 7 hr 52 minutes totally trashed, can't think of a better way to spend the weekend.
Talk later
Tookie