There's a big race in Michaux in a couple days. The longest mountain bike race ever held here, and I'm wondering how many peeps will be racing? I know a lot of my Virginia friends won't be making it. Many don't like the early 0700 start time, or they don't like the extra long distance (how many people have ever finished a "regular" Michaux race and wished it were longer?). Others don't like the feeling of not choosing the longest of the 3 (10, 25, or Monster), so they stay away from the 25 too.
And once again, there's a severe date conflict with another popular race, the one at Fair Hill. It's gonna be hard for the Balto-Philly-Delaware contingent to skip their local one-lap classic. That's a lot of folks that would ordinarily race Michaux. There's also an XTerra tri at Rocky Gap, MD that is taking a few of my Bike Lane team mates.
Then there's the Michaux locals, many of whom are helping out with the race instead of racing, as did many for the Spring version. For a variety of reasons, it could be a fairly slim field. The pre-registered list on BikeReg was certainly pretty small, though it also was for Maximus, and we did get a huge turnout on gameday.
One friend said, "...the world doesn't need another endurance race.." This is a friend from the group of six who have done every Shenandoah Mtn 100 since Chris started this business. Starting this year, Pennsylvania alone now has six 50-milers, one 100K, and the 101. Is this the future of our sport? I don't mind terribly if it is, though I certainly do have fun at the little sprints like Wednesday at Wakefield too.
Hope to ride with some friends on Sunday, come on out if you're on the fence.. Prove me wrong.
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Whoowee, can't wait to hear how that hundie-k turned out. At one point Sunday I woke briefly from a nap and tried to figure out how far along the field would be at that time. I couldn't do the math so I rolled over and continued along the nap path.
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