Short storyPretty solid ride for the first 40miles...UNTIL my rear derailleur broke. Until the end Single Speed with a max speed of 7.5mph. Fine for the trails but too slow for the fireroads towards the end.
More detailed view:
The race is a pretty good one. It is also very different compared to other endurance races I have done. There is not as much climbing, but there was plenty of points in the race where you needed your power to get through the rocks.
The race starts out with a 2.5 mile climb, but after that you never climb anything else that is more then 8%. The race includes some really Technical Shed/Gambril like trails, and with some fun super tight single track with mountain shrubs(maybe mt. laural?) giving you only 2 ft of trail up to your top tube. I was happy to just "ride" steady at this race. I had some issues where I couldn't actually go full out, cause I had to make sure I could get through the many rock gardens. The Rocks for the most part are actually setup pretty well so you can ride them. There were about 5-6 times I got off my bike, cause I dabbed and just walked through that rock section. Since the race was not the usual Fire road up and then Single track downhill, you had to be on the gas when you could, but this meant being on the gas through real singletrack. So you had a good amount of spinning. There were some Dirt roads, and grass tracks as well. I actually didn't find those that annoying since you spent some upperbody/core energy on the single track. So the Fire roads and grass double tracks were good to regroup on. I had some good back and forth with some folks, but once my derailleur busted that part of the race was done.
Broken Derailleur
What makes this annoying was that I had a derailleur hanger, but these new XT mechs have a piece that is suppose to break off, and I guess you are to have the replacement for that too. After I made my bike a SS I could only go 7.5 miles an hour. I was just trying to get the ride done at this point. If I could have set it up with a little bigger gear that would of helped. Taking what I had done, I kept the same avg. speed to the finish I think I would have done a 5:15 hour time. Well here are the stats: