New Years Day Extravaganza: BOR vs. Chubb, The Epic Battle
Brief report: Chubb victorious. BOR wounded, but coming back for more.
So as a BOR tradition, as of 2013, the new year is kicked off with the BOR New Years Extravaganza. This event consists of a ridiculous amount of bike and run miles and hopefully some kayak miles if more team members would buy kayaks, you know who you are Dave and John, and this year was no different. We set off with an ambitious plan to ride castlewood state park trails then ride to greensfelder and ride the trails, then return to castlewood, a 40 ish mile ride, and then run 13 on the castlewood trails. While the distances seemed long the terrain was easy to moderate at worst and seemed more than do able in a days time. However, Captain Ahab grabbed a hold of it and started changing locations and the like until we settled on Chubb Trail. Now anyone who has ridden chub trail knows that it is the yeng and the yang of the mountain biking world. the west Tyson side is very rocky, hilly and technical while the lone elk side is very flat and fast. Chubb is also an out and back, 7 each way for a 14 mile total if you don't do the castlewood challenge loop.
So with this being Paul's first experience with Chubb and the rest of us having not trained as hard as we should have, the 16 mile ride followed by a 16 mile run followed by a 16 mile ride seemed like it might be a little much but we decided to give it a go and see what happened. Turns out what happened was a war of attrition between the four members of BOR and the epic Chubb Trail.
So the day started around 7:00 am with a text from Neil saying he was running late, which is odd since he was the closest of us to the trail...... Undeterred Paul, Captain Ahab and myself (Kevin) set off on the West Tyson side full of hope and excitement. Then Chubb decided it had enough of our generally positive outlook and sent Captain Ahab careening off the trail and almost off a 10 foot drop. After that we got back on the trail and continued the beating until we reached the picnic table at the top of the hill. There Paul decided it would be a good idea to take video of part of our decent down the back side, however it didn't turn out to be as awesome as it could have been since the trail was loose, leaf covered, and bouncy. So the video completely makes us looks like amateurs and its iphone quality, but here it is anyway.
Brief report: Chubb victorious. BOR wounded, but coming back for more.
So as a BOR tradition, as of 2013, the new year is kicked off with the BOR New Years Extravaganza. This event consists of a ridiculous amount of bike and run miles and hopefully some kayak miles if more team members would buy kayaks, you know who you are Dave and John, and this year was no different. We set off with an ambitious plan to ride castlewood state park trails then ride to greensfelder and ride the trails, then return to castlewood, a 40 ish mile ride, and then run 13 on the castlewood trails. While the distances seemed long the terrain was easy to moderate at worst and seemed more than do able in a days time. However, Captain Ahab grabbed a hold of it and started changing locations and the like until we settled on Chubb Trail. Now anyone who has ridden chub trail knows that it is the yeng and the yang of the mountain biking world. the west Tyson side is very rocky, hilly and technical while the lone elk side is very flat and fast. Chubb is also an out and back, 7 each way for a 14 mile total if you don't do the castlewood challenge loop.
So with this being Paul's first experience with Chubb and the rest of us having not trained as hard as we should have, the 16 mile ride followed by a 16 mile run followed by a 16 mile ride seemed like it might be a little much but we decided to give it a go and see what happened. Turns out what happened was a war of attrition between the four members of BOR and the epic Chubb Trail.
So the day started around 7:00 am with a text from Neil saying he was running late, which is odd since he was the closest of us to the trail...... Undeterred Paul, Captain Ahab and myself (Kevin) set off on the West Tyson side full of hope and excitement. Then Chubb decided it had enough of our generally positive outlook and sent Captain Ahab careening off the trail and almost off a 10 foot drop. After that we got back on the trail and continued the beating until we reached the picnic table at the top of the hill. There Paul decided it would be a good idea to take video of part of our decent down the back side, however it didn't turn out to be as awesome as it could have been since the trail was loose, leaf covered, and bouncy. So the video completely makes us looks like amateurs and its iphone quality, but here it is anyway.
The rest of the ride was uneventful through the castlewood loop and up the hill to the Lone Elk parking lot and the return to the West Tyson side. Then Chubb started taking its victims. We checked the phones to see where Neil was, and had a message that read "Fell too much, left knee and elbow hurt. on my way home" Chubb had claimed its first victim. I then proceeded to fall about 4 or 5 times with one of them being a big enough hit I wound up about 25 feet from my bike after I got done rolling downhill. I manage to tweak my left knee a little when coming off the bike on that one, but figured I would be alright after a little stretching it on the rest of the ride. Paul then managed to have a pretty intense fall smashing his hip onto a rock outcropping pretty hard, hard enough to have him cursing the ground with anger and disgust. After a few minutes he was well again and we were back to riding out the last bit of the trail. at this point the three of us had decided we probably were not going to get the last ride in and were okay with that as we rolled up to the trucks to change shoes and head off on the run. The run was fairly uneventful up to the picnic table where Paul decided his injuries were too much to do the remaining 12 miles of the run. Just before we set off a runner came flying up the back side of the hill and through the picnic area with enough speed to amaze everyone standing there, and to set off the injured Paul's competitive spirit. As he left the picnic table area with the speed of a super human, and a slight limp, Captain Ahab and I figured he would catch the mystery runner, and he did with photographic proof. Paul on the right, mystery runner on the left
Once Captain Ahab and I started down the hill my knee really started acting up, to the point of being painful so we ran / jogged / hiked the rest of the trail to lone elk and back. but while we were out there we did come across some SLUG (Saint Louis Ultrarunners Group) members and talked with them about trails and gear and the balls on our packs. Only one member of BOR that started the extravaganza finished unharmed, and surprisingly it was Captain Ahab. Maybe this year will continue like that for him, but smart money would bet that he will keep pushing and find a way to get hurt this year just like every other year....... Side note, John also did not get hurt while sending us updates from his own personal workouts that day, he managed to sit in the kitchen for a while, the move to the living room all without falling or getting injured, congrats on the achievement John!
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