Mountain Bike Reviews Forum banner

Bigfoot Classic Race report (long)

822 views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  Ebo 
#1 · (Edited)
BIGFOOT CLASSIC
California State Championship
June-uary 17, 18 & 19
Bald Mountain, 20 miles from Arcata, Humboldt County, CA

Last year we had a heat wave for the Bigfoot Classic. Weeks of hot weather turned the prairie grass atop Bald Mountain brown and crispy, so much so that the land-owner insisted we bring in a thousand-gallon water truck equipped with a fire-hose. This year was different thanks to thousands, maybe millions of gallons of water courtesy of ma nature. Yup, rain. Lots and lots of rain.

When the rain started on Thursday our 14-mile course still had good traction and only a few puddles. We were confident that the race would still go off well. Friday it drizzled a bit more, only now it was a cold rain. As riders arrived that afternoon to pre-ride only the heartiest got out and got their bikes, many simply pulled in to the venue, only to turn right around and head back to town. Not good.

A Bigfoot Classic tradition is a free hillclimb on Friday. We tack a twenty-dollar bill to a post on top of Bald Mountain—be the first to the top and it's yours. We usually get 20 riders or so. This year only 4 riders showed. Funny how the thought of going to the top of that wind-swept prairie in a cold driving rain kept so many riders away.

It rained through the night, making it tough to sleep with the rain pelting the roof of my Burro trailer. Come sun-up our volunteers arrived and we got to work putting up a shelter of EZ-Up tents and tarps. With all the added chores we pushed our start-time back a half hour. By then the rain had actually subsided a bit, so we went with the consensus of most of the riders and kept the race at its full distance; two 14 mile laps for Pros and Experts, a lap and a half for Sports, and one lap for beginners. At the start-line the riders' faces looked like those of soldiers about to enter battle --- all had expressions of worry, doubt and fear.

The first two riders to “complete” the first lap were to Sport category riders. Wrong! They were actually our first DQ’s. Both had turned the wrong way at the1/2 lap junction, despite huge neon yellow signs and arrows. Blame it on muddy glasses, or on being too cold to think. Soon the rest of the riders filed through the finish line. The beginners were the happiest, ‘cause they were done. Most of the sports, experts and pros gritted their teeth and headed out for their second lap (or 1/2 lap), but quite few packed it in, choosing a DNF over going out for more miles in the mud and the cold. Some had no choice—mechanical failures were rampant. Mud-fouled cables, broken derailleurs, broken chains, seized hubs---we saw it all. At the water hand-off few riders actually drank from the bottles we provided, choosing instead to use them to squirt off their muddy drivetrains.

As riders finished most couldn't wait to get out of their muddy, wet clothes. We steered them toward the food tent where our crew had prepared a Mexican buffet; burritos, tacos, enchiladas, and such, which was very popular, as was the hot coffee and hot cocoa. Soon it became apparent that our usual post-race activities weren’t gonna happen. No one was really interested in the Huffy Toss, the wheelie contest or the raffle. Nope, “Gimme my trophy and let me get outta here,” was the theme.

What should have been a three hour race, tops, had become a four and five hour ordeal. Our 2:00pm start time for the Super-D came and went, with riders still out on course. The race is a benefit for the Humboldt County Search and Rescue Team, and man was I glad to have the team on hand that day! They did a great job of keeping track of the riders, so we had a pretty good idea of how many were out there. But some riders had DNF’ed without checking in with us. It was only after asking around did we hear “Oh, he came in, got in his truck and left!” Bad! A reminder to all of you racers, please, please, if you DNF, let the organizer know. We could have ended up having the SAR Team searching for hours for a rider who was already back at his hotel, warm and dry. And then there was the rider had stopped on course and sought shelter in the woods, so when the SAR Team swept the course with their Quads, they didn’t see her. When she finally did pull in she said, “Oh I heard their motors. Were they looking for me?” Ya think?!

Eventually all riders were in and accounted for and we ran the SuperD. The riders loved our 3.6-mile course. Fastest time was over 23-minutes. I can’t wait to run that course next year in the dry. During the SuperD I came to very troubling realization. Our truck tires were leaving deep tracks on the dirt road leading to the finish. Among the many conditions of our use permit with the land owner is a clause pertaining to road damage. There was no way that we were going to be able to shuttle the downhill on Sunday without running the risk of being presented with a huge bill for road grading. Dang!

The weather report said reduced rain with “scattered showers” for Sunday, and that morning the sun actually peeked. Realizing the conditions we faced the riders were actually quite accepting of there not being a shuttle and pushed their bikes back up the course. The course had actually held up very well. Soil conditions were tacky and traction was good. Then just as we were about finished with practice, the sky opened up with the heaviest rain we’d seen yet!

On my walk down course to the finish line to do finish timing, I saw the course rapidly deteriorating. Any low spots on the course were becoming puddles and the tacky, cookie-dough consistency of the muddy spots was thinning into something more like pudding. Nasty!

Justin, a local semi-pro was happy to be the first rider on the start list, “I won’t have to pass anyone!” he thought. But he hadn’t thought about the full mud holes he’d have to splash through. “Every one of them was full,” he said after his runs, while those who went later reported that most of the puddles and mud holes had been splashed empty. In the end one of our course crew had the fastest time of the day, aided by having an intimate knowledge of the course—“My shovel carved most of those lines”—and by having Justin clean out all those speed-robbing mud holes and puddles.

With racing completed the food crew fed the racers hot rigatoni with meat balls, salad, sliced melon and apple pie for dessert. We had a short and sweet awards ceremony and sent our wet but happy racers home under heavy rain.

Then it was back to the main venue to take down the EZ-Ups, course markings, etc and get everything packed up. Behind the Porta-Potties I found a pile of muddy bike clothes---socks, bike shorts, tights, jersey, arm-warmers, jacket all in a muddy clump. Some racer had evidently stripped out of his wet clothes and simply left them all there! Funny.

It’s few days later. All of the muddy equipment has been cleaned and put away, results have been sent off to Team Big Bear for the State Championships, I still need to make one more trip to finish taking down the course markings, then the Bigfoot Classic will be complete for another year. In spite of spending four straight days with cold wet feet, in spite of all the extra work we all had to put in to pull this off, I’m still very happy about this year’s event. One thing I noticed all weekend was how proud the riders were over having endured. I think that our crew should be equally proud. They all worked through some of the nastiest conditions ever and we were able to provide our riders with a great weekend of racing. Congratulations Curtis, Brian, Kathy, Michelle, Rob, Dave, Joe and Denise, we did it! I can hardly wait for next year.

Bigfoot

Photo: Joe Mello helped prepare the XC course, put up most of the course markings, and had a ball getting muddier than he’d been since he was 12!
 

Attachments

See less See more
3
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top