| Over the years Gettysburg Bicycle has been consistently putting on the East Coast's most bad ass race series, the Michaux Endurance Series. Each of their three races in Michaux State Forest offer relentlessly technical trails designed to break your spirits and enhance your riding pleasure simultaneously. The first event, Michaux Maximus kicked off the series this past weekend testing the mental toughness of roughly 200 pain seeking individuals over 40, 20, and 10 mile single loop courses. Lining up for the 40 mile in the Senior Men's category is always a challenge at any Michaux race, but when looking down the starting line to spot Rob Spreng and local legend, Mike Keefer I knew it would be a tough battle start to finish. After a casual, but brisk start down Piney Mountain Ridge Road I took the holeshot going into the first ATV trail and picked up the tempo until only Rob and Mike were left at the front with Kevin Campbell just off the pace. Rob took the next turn at the front through a mix of ATV trails and singletrack that led us to our first checkpoint at mile 8 just before climbing the 800' ascent up to Ridge Road via Dead Woman's Hollow. Feeling fairly fresh I took this as an opportunity to try and take an early lead before going into the moto-inspired 3 Mile Trail. On the way up the climb my heart rate was pegged and I managed to put about 30 seconds on Rob with Mike trailing a little behind. Entering 3 Mile Trail I used some local trail knowledge to recover from my effort and flow through the rocky singletrack with little effort. Halfway through this section Rob had bridged back up to me and we cruised along together. After 3 Mile, the rocks would just get bigger and the course would become more challenging as we followed the ridgeline hitting the 1400 Block, 1500 Block, and Vista. By the time we got to Vista Rob had laid down an attack on a fireroad climb that put about 20 seconds in between us. As I attempted to close the gap the space between us slowly grew and I was left chasing an unknown time gap until reaching the chapel off of Rt 233. With about 10 miles to go I found myself about 3 minutes behind the lead with Mike Keefer only 3 minutes back. With plenty of mileage left for anything to happen there was nothing to do besides put my head down and stomp on the pedals to the finish. With an urgency to reach the finish as soon as possible the pain/pleasure balance was unmistakably skewed towards pain and each technical section or climb became physically draining. Pressing on through the final miles I finished off in 2nd, 4 minutes behind Rob Spreng and 3 minutes ahead of Mike. Kevin Campbell retained his position from the start to come in only a few minutes behind in 4th. The best moment of the day was not within the race itself, but was seeing Brian Fults at the end cheering on all of the finishers in what is one of his favorite events! I will be looking forward to the Curse of Dark Hollow this summer which will be the second stop in the series which hosts some of my favorite trails!
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