Rounding out the final leg of my east coast trip was the Mohican 100. One of the harder 100’s of the NUE Series was made even harder by severe rain and thundershowers the day before the race. I witnessed the largest hailstones I have ever seen when it looked like golf balls were bouncing of my windshield before registration.
I woke at the usual 5 am to heavy rain and had already realized that the day would be a test of bike handling and concentration in the east coast mud, roots and rocks. At the start the pace was incredibly high, I didn’t feel that great initially and found myself in the top 15 heading into the first singletrack. This wasn’t ideal positioning for me, but I put my head down and got to work. It seemed that quite a few people went way to hard at the start because 10 minutes into the race quite a few of the top riders got flats at the same time. By the time I got to aid station one I was in third place chasing Jeff Schalk and Michael Simonson. At this point I made the decision to not try and catch the front two but rather wait and see if someone was going to catch up to me and work with them, so I kept the pace moderate. This strategy didn’t work to well because I rode alone until about mile 85 when Greg Kuhn caught me in the same exact spot he caught me last year we had a good chuckle about it and continued into the final singletrack section to the finish. This is were the lead singlespeader joined us and I decided to put the hammer down and make a break for the finish, both guys stayed right with me but I was able to gap both of the them to the finish, ending up in 3rd place.
All in all the race went really well I got to test out some different Maxxis tires then the Aspens that I have been racing so far and went with the Larsen TT 1.9, this decision turned out to be a big one the tires performed incredibly cutting through the mud and giving me plenty of traction on the climbs. If you are looking for a real east coast mountain bike race check out the Mohican 100 next year.