Black Bear Rampage MTB Race

On Saturday the 27th of September, Jafer and one of his friends made the trek north to Ducktown, TN for the Black Bear Rampage, a 44 mile mountain bike race at the Ocoee Whitewater Center (site of the 96' Olympics). After setting up camp at the Thunder Rock campground, they quickly geared up to hit the trail when the first misfortune happened. Jafer was tightening his shoe straps and the plastic cinch piece broke rendering his left shoe useless.

Luckily, he had some weed-eater line in his Jeep and after a few creative attempts, found an appropriate solution to his dilemma; albeit a little Jafer rigged (he had to think outside of his usual arsenal of tools: super glue, jb weld, and tape) it held for the entire ride, a very good sign for the race. After the ride they scrambled to prepare dinner over the campfire. The menu consisted of hearty vension burritos, complete with onions, tomatoes, rice, and cheese. After a filling dinner they turned in for the night since the race was scheduled to start at 8:30 the next morning.

They awoke to a moderate temperature in the low 60s and promptly rekindled the fire to heat the pre-made pancake breakfast. Thankfully, the campground was about a mile from the start so after breakfast they packed the car and headed out. After changing, they headed to the start line where the disarray started. The line up consisted of someone saying, wave one (pro/semi-pro) to the line and then ten seconds later saying go, with no grouping of the riders into age groups. Jafer was in the second wave (expert) that started 30 seconds behind. He didn't know if he was racing against the entire expert field or if the field would be broken down into age groups, so he sprinted off the line leaving his field behind.

The first three miles of the race was on Tennessee highway 68, so he locked his fork out and caught up to the pro field in front and entered the single track in 4th place. For the next hour and a half he stayed in 3rd to 4th place, with only 5 riders in his leading group. Up to this point he had seen a bear run across the trail, two riders in front of him crash, one rider get a flat tire, and a trail marker that had fallen down causing his group to stop and argue about which way to turn.

At about the halfway point his group hit the first major climb which split the leading group even further. Jafer moved into second place overall (1st in his field) and tried to reel in the rider in front but wasn't able to make contact. For the next 22 miles, he maintained his lead over the riders behind him. At one point he had to stop and wait for the rider behind him to catch up to ask him for directions. To his dismay a chair stood in the trail which split into a Y, which meant Jafer had a 50/50 chance of going the right direction. Luckily, the other rider decided that they should go to the right which was the correct choice (Jafer was going to go left).

With less than ten miles remaining, Jafer switched it into high gear and tried to keep the pace steady to the finish. Since there were no neutral feeds at the 3 sag stations he was forced to push on without stopping to refill his bottles. He was able to carry one large bottle on his bike and a smaller bottle in his jersey pocket, which was just short of what he needed.

In the last half hour he ran out of water and steam, as he was on the verge of cramping, but he kept on to the finish. When he emerged out of the single track to the final one K climb to the finish, he was disheartened to see another rider sprint out of the trail about 15 seconds after him. Unbeknown to him, it was a rider in wave one and posed no threat but he was determined to hold his place to the line.

After 2 hours 55 minutes and 12 seconds he crossed the line for first place, 3 minutes and 7 seconds ahead of the second placed expert rider. It turned out to be a good weekend even though the race wasn't that organized and the entry fee was excessive. In short the trail made the race, not the organizers.