Trans North Georgia Adventure (TNGA) Race Report. Part 4 - Day Three to Finish

This the fourth part of my race report for the Trans North Georgia Adventure mountain bike race.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

I woke up to my alarm this time at Mulberry Gap and I was not ready to go. Folks, there is one terrible thing about Mulberry Gap Mountain Bike Get-Away and it's not their fault. They are just too damn good at taking care of their guests and making them comfortable. Once you check in there, it is SO HARD to get moving again. Between Ginni's cooking and being basically at your car, this is the easiest place to bail out of the race. I stuck around for breakfast and then for WAY too long afterwards. I ended up taking care of some bike maintenance and made three attempts to leave, only to realize at the bottom of the drive way that I forgot something. The last time I had to sneak in to grab my phone which I had left on the counter so as to avoid ridicule after coming back twice already. When I finally got moving again I was about an hour behind the people I had been riding with.

I started in on Pinhoti 3 and noticed my cleats were not disengaging well from my Shimano clipless pedals. I almost ate it several times because I couldn't unclip. I decided to rest at the top and fix it. I hopped off the bike to tighten down my cleats. I sat down on a log on the side of the trail and took off my shoes. As I started in on the second shoe, I heard a buzz and saw a large flying object about 3 feet away. I turned and looked and much to my surprise I saw an Asian Giant Hornet flying towards me. Asian Giant Hornets are not native to North America.

2 inches long with a 3 inch wingspan, fueled by pure hatred for all other living things,

They have been spotted many times all over the east coast, so it's likely a few hitchhiked here from Asia at some point. It didn't seem like it was ready to attack, but it was definitely checking me out. I also noticed it had a few friends nearby. Not good. In Asia these things have the nickname "the Yak Killer Hornet." They murder entire hives of honey bees for food and take out other wasps and hornets as well. The sting has been compared to having a nail hammered into the area of the sting and then it feels that way for 4+ hours. They are very aggressive and should be avoided. Did I mention they are the size of a large hummingbird?

I was quickly back on my bike and out of there. I did not need that additional complication to my journey. I motored on and popped out onto Georgia Route 52 where I ran into one Eddie O'Dea. He was out for a little ride on the Pinhoti trail system trying to clean up what he could of the blow downs from the huge storm that had hit the area two nights before the start of the race. Eddie holds the record time for the Trans North Georgia route. At the time though I was pretty sure I was hallucinating. After all I had just almost been attacked by hornets that shouldn't be in Georgia, and it definitely seemed more than a little weird to run into the record holder for the race I was participating in on a year when he was not racing it, whether he is a local or not. There is also the fact that if he was racing, I would not be seeing him either, because he is way, way faster than me, and does not sleep. It turned out that he was indeed there and we would actually end up leapfrogging each other several times between Georgia Route 52 and Dalton.

This photo is either proof that that Eddie was really there, or that hallucinations can take pictures.

We rode together on Pinhoti 4 where he rode out ahead of me and got the above picture of me. After P4, which was a relatively short trail, Eddie was gone, off ahead some where and I trudged up Tatum Lead, which, if I recall correctly, was a fairly miserable double track climb. I continued onward and the double track went up and down a few times until I ran into Eleanor and Chris. This section was kind of blur to me until it got exciting. After I got off P4, there was A LOT of double track. I would occasionally catch up to Eddie when he stopped to do some trail work but then he would light off down the trail again and I wouldn't see him again until the next blow down.

Lets stop here and talk about the blow downs. There was an enormous amount of storm damage on the early sections of the Pinhoti before Dalton from thunderstorms two days before the race start. Derek Kozlowski and Andrew Gates put in a heroic effort and countless hours clearing blow downs from Bear Creek to P4, clearing those sections just before the first racers got there. Hats off to them for making the race possible this year. Derek also helps organize a lot of the administrative functions of the race. Andrew and the rest of the crew at Mulberry Gap Mountain Bike Getaway provide awesome pre and post race support and offer a great place to crash right about at the mid point of the race.

Derek and Andrew and the Georgia Chainsaw Blow Down Massacre (Source: TNGA Facebook Page)

 But back to the blow downs, have you ever seen any of the crazy pictures of some of the early passes on the Tour Divide route with trees up rooted and scattered around all over the place in the trail? Think that kind of thing looks impressive in pictures? Wait until you see something like that in person and realize that pile of trees is about 25 feet tall and impenetrable. The only ways to the other side are around or over. I had needed to go around a smaller blow down earlier and then I came to the mother of all blow downs on Peeples Lake Road. It looked like a tornado or landslide had created a 25 to 35 foot tall wall of downed trees across the trail, and all the way up the side of the mountain next to me. The only way around was down into what looked like a field, but was really a collection of a every thorny, spiny, and poisonous plant on god's green earth. It was a nightmare, and it was the easiest way. Chris and Eleanor were with me at this point and we slowly picked our way through the nasty thicket of blood thirsty foliage.

When we made it out to the other side of the massive blowdown, we encountered a new challenge. We had made it back to what appeared to be the double track but there was supposed to be a turn according to the GPS. There was no trail, double track, or road anywhere to be seen where my GPS wanted me to go. There was however, a well beaten down path through a field where it was obvious a lot of traffic had passed, so I eventually settled on that as the proper route. Chris and Eleanor came to the same conclusion. so we all made our way to down the narrow path and ended up back on an old grown in double track that took us out to a gravel road. It was not the correct route. Fortunately two wrongs would make a right. I accidentally turned the wrong direction coming out of the wood back onto the track and rode all the way back around to the other side of the mega blowdown. Not realizing it was the same blowdown, I tried to figure a way around it and settled on trying to climb over it. It was not my best ever plan. I was about 25 feet off the ground balancing my forty-ish pound bike on one tree trunk and myself on another when Chris, Eleanor, and Eddie showed up. They yelled up to me that I should probably come down off the pile of trees before I got hurt. I agreed and came down and zoomed out on my GPS and realized my mistake. Luckily I was back on the track less than 100 feet for where I had left it to take the little detour around the blowdown, so I was back on course and had stayed within the rules, even if I had done it unwittingly. I can't believe I tried to climb over that blowdown, it was a really dumb move, and I could have gotten hurt badly.

This is a small blowdown. It felt like there were hundreds of these to deal with.

 From what I heard, I wasn't the only person to have a hard time in that section, a lot of people got lost there, and one the friends I made down there in Georgia nearly lost his bike when he put it down and walked away from it in the dark. That section was probably the most challenging little piece of the journey up to that point. I was relived to finish out the remainder of the double track there and get onto the single track towards the end. I had a good time ripping down the single track and then it spit me out on Dennis Mill Road, which started the short pavement grind to Ramhurst, where food awaited. I stopped in at a gas station and just bought everything that looked good. A few BBQ sandwiches, 2 orders of every deep fried appetizer in the hot box, some skittles, a few cokes, and went to town. Eddie caught up to me as was sitting down to stuff my face.

 

Thinking back on that meal kind of sickens me a little bit. Somehow, at the time, it didn't make me feel slow or sick. It's very weird the things your body tells your brain to ask for when you stress it this much. I probably put down a solid 4 or 5 thousand calories here and then hopped directly on my bike and pedaled off time trial style to try to make it to Dalton. Normally after eating that much and that heavy of food, my stomach would rebel. but it was fine that day. I ended up passing Scott and Tristan on the road to Dalton and caught up to Jim Rivers at Sonic just after I entered Dalton. He was packing up to leave as I was pulling it. I wasn't hungry thanks to my deep fried fat fest back at the gas station, but I ordered a cherry limeade and some sort of slushy frozen drink, both the largest size possible to try to get some fluids and sugar into me. I took the opportunity to work on my shoes and dry my socks. 

 

I knew after Dalton would come Snake Creek Gap which is one of the toughest sections of the race. I figured I wold catch up to Jim in this section, as over the previous sections of the race I had been a bit faster than him through the single track. Before I left Dalton, I stopped at a gas station and topped off my bladder and bought three 1 liter bottles of water and stuffed them in my jersey pockets. I was told ahead of time that there were no services and very little water on the Snake. It turned out to be a wise move to stock up on water that heavily going into the Snake in the evening.

I had a little more than 6 liters of water total heading up the highway road climb out of Dalton. If I was riding this section in day light, I would probably need about half that. When I got to the top and cut off of the pavement onto the service road that led up to the cell towers that are up there I was relieved to finally be off the highway and out of the busy traffic. I stopped briefly to rehydrate and snap a photo of the first decent view I had seen in all the of the hundreds of miles up till that point. 

When I crawled out onto the rock where I sat to enjoy some water and take this picture, I accidentally dropped one of my 1 liter bottles off the cliff, and there was no way to get down there to get it safely. I was down to 5 liters of before I even started the Snake.

I was told horror stories about the beginning 7 or 8 miles of the Snake. I was told it was super rocky and technical. I am from Pennsylvania. My particular area of the United States sits directly where the glaciers

deposited all the rock scraped up during the last Ice Age. When somebody tells me that a trail is a 7 mile rock garden. I think that they are talking about 7 miles of what is shown in the picture below:

Sizes range from soccer ball sized to large pumpkin sized

That is a rock garden. Now don't get me wrong, Snake Creek Gap, especially the first section, had a few rocky sections. But nothing on it was even remotely close to what was pictured above. There was nothing on that section that was that difficult to ride if you are used to riding rocks. It is the roughest section of singletrack though. The only compounding factor that added difficulty to it was fatigue.

I made it through that first 7 mile section of the Snake and popped out at a fire ring. I sat down to eat a little bit and fix my shoes again. My cleats kept getting loose for some reason and weren't releasing properly so I decided to change them out. I took stock of my water. I was down to 1 liter bottle and whatever was left in my camel back, which was not much. The sun started to set and it was dark before I knew it. This was the first night of the race that I would be riding alone. I intentionally try to stay with others at night, because it makes it easier to keep focused and keep moving. This time I was relying on the fact that I wanted to catch Jim to keep me moving.

I eventually popped out at a trail head parking lot along route 136 and saw there was a public bathroom. I was really excited to see that, because it meant I could get water there. I was almost out, down to a few sips left in my hydration bladder. Except I couldn't get water there. The public restroom was not plumbed for running water and just had chemical toilets and hand sanitizer. It kind of bummed me out that there was no running water but I sat down next to my bike. I was a mere 20 miles down the route from Dalton and I had drank about four and half liters of water and a liter of Coca Cola. I needed to figure out where I was going to get water.

Luckily, my GPS unit indicated that there was a reliable water source within the next few miles on the back side of the next ridge I had to climb over. I ate my last BBQ sandwich from the gas station in Ramhurst and set off across the high way to trudge up the next climb. Once I got to the top of the ridge I thought I was going to be popping out on a road for a bit, I could have sworn I saw a vehicle's headlights moving a few hundred yards ahead of me, but a road never materialized. It could have been Jim, but I think it's more likely that I was hallucinating.

What the GPS said right before things started getting weird.

 I started down the ridge line and now that I wasn't climbing I realized the that the spiders were going to be an issue. This area of Georgia has some really damn big spiders that like to come out at night an build their webs right across the trail. Just really big, ugly, golf ball sized, nasty suckers, that love to be right at face height. Now eating spider webs is a normal part of mountain biking solo or at the front of a group, and I have desensitized myself to it somewhat. Spiders however, are the one thing I can think of that I am unreasonably bothered by. It's not a phobia, or even really fear. I just really do not like them.  When I am extremely sleep deprived and physically exhausted, it's a really bad time to be catching giant spiders with my face. They didn't spin fine whispy webs either. When I hit one, I knew it. It almost felt like running into some really low pound test fishing line. The webs I could deal with and normally I would see them just in time to catch a face full of web and miss the spider. Every once and a while though, I would not be able to react in time and I would catch on of those big suckers right on my face, which would result in a full panic stop so I could make sure I got it off of me. Call me a wuss or whatever, but doing this section of trail in the dark in August is not that much fun thanks to the spiders.

Eventually I made it down off the ridge and found my water source. It was a small trickle of a stream that must have been fed by a nearby spring. It was like this spot was designed for me to stop and refill on water. I stopped and filled my hydration bladder, and filtered a bottle of water with it. This is a useful trick if you use a Sawyer Mini or other filter hooked up inline on your hydration pack hose. If you fill your bladder and hang it up with the hose-side down, you can quickly filter water into bottles for those times you need to carry more than 3 liters. just pinch the bite valve and let gravity do the work. You can apply pressure to the bladder but it doesn't really speed things up all that much.

I finished filtering water and had a snack then pushed onward. The spiders got fewer and farther between after I got off that ridge, but I kept hallucinating the glint from spider webs across the trail that had me ducking, weaving, and some times stopping to avoid them when they were not there. I also hallucinated a few snakes that turned out to be sticks or twigs. I kept moving until my GPS indicated that I was at the top of a long descent that would take me out of the Snake. I had to decide if I wanted to go to sleep or just push on. I called into mtbcast.com and left a dazed, sleep deprived message before deciding to set up camp for the night.  (You can listen to it here)

I moved to what I had thought was off the trail and pulled out my bivy and ground sheet and passed out in it. This was my first night of true wilderness camping in the race and to be honest, I think I might do this more next time, because I definitely didn't oversleep. Sleeping in comfy places with services is great, but I'm just not disciplined enough to not allow them to turn into a huge time suck. For the Tour Divide though, I think I'm going to go with a tent. I didn't really care for the bivy sack, so if I'm going to actually stick to a plan of avoiding hotels, a tent is in order.

When I woke up three hours later, I realized in the early morning light that instead of moving off the trail, I had actually slept right smack dab in the middle of it. In my olive drab bivy, it's unlikely that I would have been seen until it was too late by any riders passing in the night. Oops. I got on with packing up and getting ready to go and ate a iced honey bun and a bag of jerky for breakfast. Ah the luxuries of back country ultra-endurance racing, what a nutritious and delicious way to start the day.

I had about 60 miles to cover before I was finished with the race.

Once I got completely packed I set off down the 3 or 4 mile downhill I had stopped at the beginning of the night before. It was nice to start with an easy section to get the legs warmed up and spin out some of the soreness from the past 300 miles. It was mostly double track until I got out of the Snake back onto pavement for a little bit. The pavement didn't last long and I was back onto double and single track. The race ends on a bunch of ridge top trails that sort of undulate and are really pretty awesome. Unfortunately it all kind of feels the same so I don't remember a ton about them just that it's a lot of gently rolling (compared to earlier in the race) single track along the top of these ridges. The only bit of this long section I really remember vividly was when I made a disastrous navigational error.

Ok so, it wasn't really that bad, but in the state I was in it felt like the end of the world when I realized what I had done. I was cruising down a fire road toward where the route drops down on some really fun single track to where US Highway 27 goes through a gap in the ridge. Except I didn't know that it was single track and I was happily coasting downhill on the fire road. I blew the turn onto the single track, and I was in a daze, not paying attention to my GPS. When I finally looked down again, the navigation line showing the route was not there. At first I thought maybe my GPS was acting up, so I zoomed out hoping it would refresh the track. How wrong I was. The GPS was fine. I had missed the turn and gone downhill almost 2 miles off route, and I would now have to climb all the way back up the ridge to find the turn just to come back down again. I wanted so badly to catch Jim before the finish. He had only left an hour before me from Dalton, and I hadn't done much stopping at all since then. I was actually surprised I hadn't caught him yet. This setback could mean he would be out of reach. I climbed as fast as I could on completely destroyed legs to get back to the top and I now realized it was time to dig in deep and leave the rest of my energy on the course. I only had a little more than 20 miles to go and the end is about 10ish miles of flat unmaintained rail trail.

I got back on course and when I crossed Highway 27 I had to go back up to get on top of the ridge again for the final single track push. I was met by a nasty 20% to 30% grade that was eroded and a general example of how not to build a road. It would be the last major climb of the race. It was tiny compared to the monsters in the first third of the race, but it hurt every bit as much now that I had all of those climbs seething and boiling in my legs. I was greeted by this sign at the top of the road which made me angry and made me laugh at the same time:

If that was a quality job, I need to be a road building contractor in Georgia.

I found the entrance to the trail and hammered away, it didn't take long before I was out and onto the road heading to start of the rail trail. I was moving at a good tempo pace on the road and as I rounded the corner to jump onto the rail trail, there he was!

I had caught Jim, and the only thing that I could think of to do was to pass him and make sure he didn't keep up. I had spent so many hours chasing him since Dalton that I was a little salty about the fact that he had eluded me for so long. I went from tempo to a little bit above threshold and pegged it there. As I passed him turning into the rail trail he said something but I didn't quite catch it and just gave it everything I had left. I was moving at quite a good clip in my highest gear. I was going to make it to Alabama first, if for no other reason than I spent most of the past 24 hours just trying to catch up to him. I hunkered down, hands on either side of my stem, as aero as I could get and just gave it everything I had left. I made it to the line about 15 minutes or so before Jim. I had finished, and it was completely worth it! I'll save my closing thoughts for the post race report but I'll leave you with this. That was the hardest thing I've done in my life. Mentally, physically, and emotionally, the TNGA will test anyone who attempts to race it.

Jim and I at the finish!