No real pictures for this post, I was to busy riding to take any.
The weekend of June 20th we loaded up the camper and headed up to Cable, WI for the Chequamegon metric 100. I signed up for the metric version of the race, 62 miles of prime CAMBA singletrack. I have been riding quite offen, but with all the rain singletrack miles were limited.
Kyleen and I were staying a the KOA on Hayward, it is a nice campground, but we prefer the quite nature of a state park campground. We had taken Friday off of work so we headed up Thursday night after work. The plan was to get a ride in right away in the AM and then meet up with the guys in the afternoon for another. When we woke up it was raining so our plans changed. We headed into Hayward to bum around.
At about noon I heard from Brett and we decide to meet up and ride at the Namakogan trail. I was not sure how the trails would be, but they were great! We did a quick 10 mile ride and called it quits. It was just enough to get the legs and the mind ready for the race.
It worked out pretty well as far as lodging. Brett, Larry, Jose and Frank ended up getting a cabin at the KOA and Troy and Kerry ended up getting the campsite next to us. It was nice to have a bonfire to wind down a bit before we went to bed.
Race day started at 6 as we needed to head out by 7:00 or so to get up to Lakewoods. It was a bit of a cluster at the start. I quickly got ready and headed to the starting line across the road, I didn't even stop and the race was on. The first 4 miles or so where on Rock Lake Rd so that was a nice warm up. Then a quick left on to Rock Lake Trail. Rock lake is a rocky challenging trail so, naturally everyone bunches up. I was pretty happy with how things were going by the time we reached the town hall. Kyleen was waiting there to cheer me on. I filled up my bottle and headed off again. I picked my way through the rocks and I was happy that I was able to ride most everything on the Rock Lake and Hildebrand Loop, I'm not the best with technical features, but I think that you learn quickly on the CAMBA trails.
After the Hildebrand loop it was down a couple of fire roads to the check point when Tim's wife was sitting, she offered me a freezey pop and I gladly took it, it hit the spot! I made it to the check point in about 4.5 hours and I was thinking I was going to finish in 7.5 or 8 hours. Well that did not happen. Everything was going well until I noticed my water was running really low at about mile 50. I conserved my water until I got to about the middle of the Ojibwa trail. Then it was slow going. I ended up getting a bottle of water from a guy on the trails, man that helped a lot. I drank that and I was good to go. Ojibiwa took what felt like forever to get off of. The gravel road into cable was a great site, only about 2 miles left.
I rolled into Three Rivers Eatery at about 5:10. I had finished in 9 hours 12 minutes, I was thinking that it would take me 9 so I was not too far off even with running out of water. It was a great day on the trails, no crashes, no machanicals just a great ride.
Thank Tim and crew for the great race, I will be back again.
