Ladies' Mountain Bike Weekend at Fire Mountain

Man, this was SUCH a fun weekend!

It all came about during a SORBA ladies' ride a few weeks ago, and several of the girls (i.e. everyone but me) were discussing doing this event (Fire Mountain Women's Enduro). They talked about getting a cabin for the weekend, riding on Saturday, and doing the race on Sunday. I thought about it, and decided on a whim to join them - my first Enduro (i.e. "real" mountain bike race).

Educational Sidebar: An "enduro" is a combination of endurance and downhill racing. You ride the entire course (i.e. you don't get shuttled up to the top of the mountain) but you're only timed on the downhill sections ("stages"). Results are based on the cumulative time of all stages combined.

Anyway, I'm NOT a downhill racer. I'm much better at slow and steady pedaling up hills, and not so good at bombing down a mountain. I had zero expectations going into the event, and met all zero of them. 😜

We had a crew of 6 going up on Friday, and 4 of us carpooled together starting after work. We got up to the cabin around 8:30pm and finally headed to dinner at Nantahala Brewing Company around 9pm. The food was eh, and I was wayyyy tired, but we still made it up until about 1am just hanging out at the cabin after we got back.

Home for the weekend

The next morning, had some awesome breakfast casserole then rolled out to the trails to meet some others who had driven up that morning. Rode together for several hours and got in 9.2 miles with 1,400 ft of climbing, with plenty of stops and socializing. It was supposed to be rainy the entire day, so we were pleasantly surprised that we stayed dry and relatively warm!

After a great morning/midday of riding, we headed to the cabin to drop off bikes and do a quick-change before heading into Sylva for their 3rd Annual Brew Hop festival - yep, beer festival during ladies' bike weekend = perfect timing! We enjoyed a just-enough-but-not-too-much afternoon of yummy beers and food in the lovely town of Sylva, NC (who would have thought??) then ended the night with some mexican food before crashing relatively early back at the cabin.

The next day, it was the Big Event. We got up to the trails and loaded up in the COLD (32F) weather, had our pre-ride meeting, and then we were off! The start of an enduro is pretty low-key since your timing to get UP the mountain doesn't matter at all. We casually rolled out about 10 minutes after the official "go". We'd all bundled up pretty heavily, but by the end of the first climb, we were all definitely warm!

We hung out at the top for a while, then started out on our first downhill run! It was long (10+  minutes for me) but exhilarating! Next we had to turn up and go back up the same way again, then down another fun downhill for Stage 2. The "climb" to Stage 3 was minimal, and Stage 3 was also very short. Finally we had one last climb up the mountain followed by a long Stage 4 downhill to finish.

Whee! Total of 14.2 miles with 2,100+ feet of climbing.

Mountain x3

So, the results?

LAST in my category, but there were at least 3 slower people overall... so I'll take it. Besides, a field of only 26 total racers was pretty small, so I definitely did not expect to place. I'm proud of myself for getting out of my comfort zone, doing the race, and actually not falling over!

Considering doing a few more of these this year... but I need to work on my downhill skills for sure.