Feedback from a Regular:

From our friend Sandie Reynolds after last weekends pre-ride of the Tuscarora course. It was a gnarly cold day with lots of ive crystals in the dirt. Below are some excerpts, but read the full article when you have time! It's linked below.



"Today I went mountain biking. I go mountain biking quite a lot, but today was different.
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It certainly is not ‘trail system’ mountain biking of which we all so comfortably become accustomed to. It immediately made me think that these are the kind of trails that mountain biking originated on. Well before organized groups of mountain bikers built and maintained trail systems…this is how mountain biking must have been many years ago. There were no berms, no rock gardens with a clearly passable line, no hard packed easily passable trails, no dirt to be seen in the single track.
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For a long time I’ve always thought that Zach and I had absolutely opposite ideas of what a ‘fun’ ride is. He thinks of climbing up Rhodedendron in the Long Pine Classic as ‘fun.’ It afforded me 3 asthma attacks without an inhaler in sight (short coming on my part.) Our difference in opinion of ‘fun’ is another reason why I wanted to pre ride the Tuscarora course before registering for the race. I wanted to see if his idea of fun would somehow miraculously mesh with my idea of fun, for once. I still can’t say that our ideas of what fun mountain biking is has meshed, but I can say now that I understand where his idea of fun comes from. It took me a long time to understand it, but now that I get it, I am grateful and humbled. Thank you Zach! Thank you for stepping outside of the realm of trail system mountain bike racing and getting down to the true grit of what mountain bike racing really can be. I know of no one else in this area that has the guts to do what he does. He endures a lot of shit from people who come to his races and bitch about the trails not being ‘clear’ or a climb not being rideable that you had to hike-a-bike. Well…that’s mountain biking, but maybe not what most would expect from an organized race. If you can’t clear a trail, then you’ve lost the battle between yourself and Mother Nature (in essence). Quite possibly you should venture off the beaten path of your regularly maintained trail system and get a load of what Mother Nature can dish out. That’ll tune up your skills in a jiff.
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Full Article