Pisgah MTB Adventure

Training has been pretty much a joke lately. I've been off and on with various health related issues since March but I was really looking forward to the PMBAR. I'm sooo glad I backed off and was healthy for this one!! Up until this day, the Offroad Assault on Mt Mitchell was my all time most fun ride ever. This past weekend I teamed up with Carol-Ann (aka moonbeam to some) for the adventure. We'd never ridden together but I knew she was cool because she rides a 29er, has been riding the same amount of time as I have, likes long rides, and is just really laid back and easy to get along with...and she has ridden Pisgah and knows it better than me (bonus!). The weather was great, and I let Carol-Ann lead the way, and would put in my 2 cents when appropriate. To start, we made some good route decisions, and probably some that were not so fast--but they were FUN. We both wanted to really enjoy the trails and not worry so much about which way to the checkpoints was "faster". It worked out, though, because we were the first female team to hit the first three checkpoints. That's sort of where things went south though...in the midst of blabbering our heads off we missed the correct turn to one of the checkpoints. After we finally realized that we missed the turn, we thought the gravel road we were on would take us to the right place but what we didn't realize was that the road we were on was a prohibited route. Even worse, it led us to the Blue Ridge Parkway (totally out of the way, and obviously also prohibited to ride on). We decided to not backtrack and waste several more hours (and lots of climbing) and navigated straight to the checkpoint. We were told that we had to be DQ'd. Bummer, but you know what - 13.5 hours and 70+ miles of excellent Pisgah riding was all I could ask for. I was not about to complain, especially when there was a beer and burrito waiting at the end. The last few hours of the ride was a bit tough since our motivation was relatively low and it was getting dark. The thought of the beer, burrito, and seeing Eddie got me through :) I hope to be able to make it to Pisgah Productions' second race of the year, the Double Dare (2x the fun)! Next time I'll place a little more importance on the map reading part ;)