2010 Devil's Backbone Mountain Cross || Post Race Report

This year's event turned out to be as good as last year's event. It is still listed as a non-competitive event but as I overheard one of the riders say "If there is a timer then it's a race" I think he made a good point. But what is cool about this event is that it can be a race or a non-competitive event or an epic ride with friends or you and the mountains. It's your pick!

My plan was to do better riding the course and have a better finish time and for the most part, I met my goal. This year's course was a little different making it easier for riders to make it into the feed zone area.

Here is a map of this year's course:

**WARNING** If you have a mapmyride.com account and want to print the cue sheet, some of the legs are WRONG. The map route is RIGHT. I think it would be best to do your own map.

It took us about 26 miles to get to the first feed zone which the second feed zone is in the same location. I think the first part of the course was longer and there was more climbing this year. It seems to take forever to get there.

The second leg of the course was a nice downhill section, which was made with a slate type flat rock and was different than the hours of gravel road that I had just been on. You could fly down on this stuff! You know what goes down must go up and it did. With a climb back to the Blue Ridge Parkway. This was one of the harder sections for me. We hit the Blue Ridge up around Irish Creek and from there it was 3 miles up.

The third leg of the course was departing the second feed zone with about 8-10 miles of downhill gravel roads. Riding back on the downhill section ran-up on two pot smokers in a jeep. I was going about 40 mph when I got up to them. I guess they found it funny to speed up and throw rocks and dirt up everywhere. Not too smart of a thing to do since they did not know that riders were up in front of them on the trail.

By the Numbers:

65.14 Miles
5:49:58
2913 cals burn
4 water bottles
2 cups of Coke
2 cups lemonade
1 cookie
2 1/2 packets of CLIF Blocks
1 Handfull of M& M's
126 riders
75th place


One improvement for me was that I could climb more of this course than last year which was a good thing. I also learn something to. A 29 inch or 700cc wheel does much better on this course. I have taken care of that issue for next year with having a Waltworks Cyclocross bike built. I was a little late with getting my name on the waitlist to have it here in time for this year.

 Check out our previous post on the 2009 Devils Backbone Mountain Cross Report