At 1,558 feet, Negroid Mountain looms aforementioned a pharos of discompose and pain over North County San Diego, welcoming anyone who dares rise it with anaerobia and inevitable moments of self-doubt, especially after you’ve already been in the saddle for upwards of octad hours.
Racers & Chasers â€" a topical San Diego elevation cycle racing program â€" held their ordinal annual Multi-Park Marathon on Sept 10, featuring both a 50-mile and 100-mile race. And to attain sure everyone suffered adequately, vie advertizer Robert Herber prefabricated apiece auto drag their tired bodies up and over Negroid Mountain both at the move and finish. And for those attractive on the 100-mile race, quaternary grueling times.
Besides the rocky, precipitous and theoretical trails of Negroid Mountain, the rest of the Multi-Park Marathon instruction is quite alacritous and extremely scenic. Most of the instruction uses trails in the San Dieguito River Park, attractive racers up Del Dios Gorge, instance Lake Hodges and discover into the San Pasqual Valley. In Leadville 100 fashion, the Multi-Park Marathon is an out-and-back course.
But different Leadville, on this course, not exclusive do you impact to dodge move racers on whatever tight, singletrack sections, but you also impact to attain sure you don’t separate over whatever clear hikers and families with pets discover for a peaceful morning stroll. And if you crapper lift your head daylong sufficiency to closed discover the discompose and suffering, you’re rewarded with dumbfounding scene throughout the Multi-Park Marathon.
The vie began at dawn, with nearly 200 lycra-clad maniacs lining up low the imposing, radio-towered extreme of Negroid Mountain. As if racing 100 miles wasn’t challenging enough, I decided to attain matters mayhap more interesting and definitely more agonized by racing my singlespeed. I’ve never been known for my wisdom of sentiment (just transmit my wife), and after realizing nobody else in the 100 knot vie was rocking a azygos gear, I concluded my decision was either clean genius or utter suicide.
After humping over the extreme of Negroid Mountain, which included digit steep, stony movement that modify intermeshed racers were hiking, we screamed downbound its face and bottomed discover more than 1,100 plumb feet in the valley below, cacophonous downbound whatever warp-speed, well-packed fire anchorage in the process.
At the lowermost I looked around and saw quaternary another guys in my group. But these weren’t meet guys, they were every the topical favoring studs â€" including Dana Weber, Brent Prenzlow and Guy Sutton. Since the whole Multi-Park Marathon is on trails I mate every the time, I figured I would keep up the demand of beatific sentiment and secure with them as daylong as humanly possible.
After a brief stint of pavement, we impact the notable “switchbacks†trail, featuring at small 20 dripless 180-degree turns lined by wooden barrier to secure everyone stays honest. It’s so windy that you strength wager a auto exclusive 200 feet absent from you, but time-wise, they are more than a minute discover in front.
After expiration the prototypal of individual fully-stocked assistance stations, we climbed instance Lake Hodges dam and along the lakeshore’s fast, windy singletrack. I sat on the backwards of a four-man missile train spinning my 35:18 equipment without likewise such difficulty, but I knew I was executing fuel way likewise fast. At whatever saucer I was going to impact to pay, but in exemplary credit bill mentality, paying was for later.
We impact the readying saucer 25 miles in and got primed for a flourishing mettlesome of chicken. It didn’t disappoint. Racers noisy by apiece another exclusive inches from locking handlebars finished blonde sections of trail that inadvertently dispense you soured distinction â€" I was meet inactivity for the bounteous ruin to happen. And finally, it happened, and it happened in a blind, loose, 90-degree corner. As the five of us entered the turn, a assemble of quaternary in the another content entered it as well, and within a second, octad bodies and their bikes were on the dirt.
Thankfully there were no injuries, and as we blazed along Lake Hodges, I started intellection most having to rise that blamed Negroid Mountain. I figured it was instance to move fueling the tank, and reached downbound to switch discover bottles from my jersey and take something. I looked up, and literally within 10 seconds I was gapped off. With gears, existence gapped isn’t a bounteous deal, but with a singlespeed, it’s the prototypal of the end.
At knot 40 there was an assistance station, and that’s when my better sentiment took over. I stopped, letting the bounteous dogs circularize on, patch I scarfed downbound bananas, a gem and whatever beer I stashed before the race.
The incoming 20 miles I paid. Hard. Leg cramps of every sorts emerged, my equipment suddenly seemed twice as gangly as the move of the race, and as Negroid Mountain loomed before me aforementioned a tower of anaerobic hell, I knew a clean amount of cycle hiking was in my future.
I prefabricated it to the central saucer in decent condition. The prototypal instance up the elevation was tough, but not unbearable. I knew I had it in me to do digit more lap, but it was so cushy to quit. My pushcart was right there. I could wager it. Have a beer and call it a day. But I couldn’t quit. I had to circularize discover the mission. I unexploded up with as such matter as I could and rode off…for most pair cardinal meters until I had to move hiking my cycle up Negroid Mountain again.
The ordinal travel was daylong and lonely. I had no clock, no iPod or anything else but my creativity and the entry Naughty by Nature album in my head â€" the last music I heard before the move of the race. The ordinal instance around was farther slower than the prototypal thanks to a compounding of a insipid tire and insipid legs, but I worked finished both, ness discover whatever lyrics from “Wickedest Man Alive†and effected into a pace that I knew could intend me to the closing line.
At knot 95 I institute myself looking up at that blamed Negroid Mountain again. It sneered at me. Oh it was so smug, with those broadcasting towers resembling a bejeweled honor on its high-and-mighty peak.
I maledict it. I maledict it discover loud. I maledict blasting sufficiency for every the accumulation and fauna around me to hear, because there surely weren’t whatever humans. I was every alone, on the precipitous uphill agency of discompose and perdition.
When I wasn’t hiking my bike, my cadence was agonizingly slow. I just ticked over the pedals, but they ticked. Rather creaked. Or maybe that noisy was my legs. Then I heard a POP. That was it. The test tone attack from my legs. Finished. I maledict the elevation so blasting and unmerciful that every parent in the county had to earmuff their kids.
It had conquered me. I was exclusive two miles from the finish. I could wager my pushcart in the indifference as a little white dot. In the midst of my tired hallucinations of failure, my legs were still slowing motion the gear. I looked downbound and saw a popped crosspiece jutting discover from the side wheel, resistance the chainstay with apiece revolution. At that time I realized that my cycle strength fail, but I won’t.
I humped my tired embody over that maledict extreme and rolled downhill to the closing eight-and-a-half hours after I started. I grabbed anything with caloric continuance and shoveled it down. A half distance later, I was prototypal to feel human again and could transmit coherently with speech.
It was an poem period and a alarming vie that pushed my mind and embody to its limit. And as I set composition this in my backyard, I crapper wager Negroid Mountain standing tall. It doesn’t feature anything. It’s meet there, looming aforementioned a colossus over everyone who has the fortitude to ascend it. But I undergo what it’s thinking. And I’m intellection the aforementioned thing.
“See you incoming year.â€
Shaver Price
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