Throughout 2024, Hailey Moore (in her own words) has been inching her way along the mountain biking learning curve. She recently rode the Old Fort Strong Endurance Festival and writes about what she learned from her first mountain bike race.
In 2024, I decided to try to get better at mountain biking. As I’ve written previously, the idea started as a means to an end: I wanted to feel more confident riding technical terrain, at least insofar as the technical demands of the more backcountry singletrack routes here in Colorado. Over the course of the year, I test rode a full-suspension bike for the first time, gained a better understanding of the fundamentals of trail riding at a women’s mountain biking clinic, and spent some memorable weekends riding new-to-me sections of the Colorado Trail, including a two-night tour down in the San Juan Mountains. Most recently, as an unexpected capstone to this ongoing personal project, I closed out the year by riding the Old Fort Strong Endurance Festival in western North Carolina. The full day spent on swooping XC terrain confirmed that I’m now enjoying the means of mountain biking as much as the places it will take me. Firsts are always formative experiences, so in hopes that others might gain something from my takeaways, here’s what I learned from my first mountain bike race.
My First Mountain Bike Race: The Old Fort Strong Endurance Festival
Twelve weeks ago, the Old Fort Strong Endurance Festival didn’t exist. The race went from improvisational idea to inspiring actuality in the weeks following Hurricane Helene’s devastation of western North Carolina. Spearheaded by the would-be venue and non-profit, Camp Grier; local event powerhouse Tanawha Adventures, and the keepers of the course, the G5 Trail Collective; the Old Fort Strong Endurance Festival was designed to serve as a massive fundraising effort for the town of Old Fort (pop: ~900). It also hoped to provide the extended community with a chance to come together and celebrate in the spiritual salve of shared sport.
Due to the widespread damage of the storm—landslides and eroded hillsides, washed out roads, and trails barricaded by wind-strewn deadfall—the event was organized around a lap format, with separate loops for trail runners and mountain bikers. Participants for each discipline could line up for 6-,12-, or 24-hour categories. As my first mountain bike race, I definitely wanted to have a day out there, but maybe not all 24 hours of said day, so I opted for the 12-hour category.
The mountain bike race course covered a loop a little over eight miles long with ~1,200’ of elevation gain—stout enough!—and over the course of the day I was able to complete ten laps (unlike some time-based events, riders were advised that laps started before but completed after the cut-off time would not count towards their total). The long day in the saddle and lapped format gave me plenty of time to think about the experience; here’s what’s stuck with me the most.
About the Lapped Format
Although 24-hour mountain bike races are not as prominent as they once were, lap-style events still certainly have a place in cycling more broadly (Cyclocross races, XC races, criteriums). Admittedly, I wasn’t completely sold on the idea of putting the same loop on repeat for 12 hours going into the event, but I enjoyed the lapped format far more than expected. In fact, I really enjoyed it.
Though largely non-technical in terms of features, the trails included in the race’s eight-mile loop had plenty of twists and turns. It seemed like I was always going into or coming out of a corner. Carrying speed through corners and trusting myself (and tires) to lean the bike are skills that I need to work on, so having the opportunity to learn the course and loosen up as the day went on was rewarding. My upper body may have felt as stiff as a board on the first lap or two, but by laps four, five, and six, I was approaching some flow. I think the positive reinforcement that comes through rehearsal and repetition is important in MTB progression.
On Pacing
In addition to (unfounded) worries about fighting boredom on the course, I had concerns about how to pace for the duration of the day. I am not naturally suited for the more powerful nature of mountain biking, with such short bursts of high output, again and again and again. I much prefer the steady tempo grind of a sustained climb.
Fortunately, the Old Fort Strong Endurance Festival course provided more of a middle ground. There were definitely a handful of steep corners that you had to power through to clear, but the majority of the route was more consistently undulating. The longest climb on the course was about 350’ and came at the beginning of the loop; three more climbs between 100-200’ punctuated the remainder with a few shorter bops mixed in between.
I paced each of the longer climbs as a moderate tempo; i.e., hard-ish on perceived exertion but bearing in mind that the course was designed to levy death by a thousand cuts. My goal for the day was to maintain a consistent but not-effing-around pace, and my splits for each lap mostly reflected that: my times on laps one through six were within a few minutes, I seemed to start slowing down on lap seven, but my new “tired” pace for that lap was a pace I was able to maintain even more consistently through the end (despite the fact that the last three laps were entirely in the dark). I was also pleasantly surprised to feel that I was able to recover more than I would have thought on the longer descents—even if my mediocre descending abilities meant I cost myself time here on each lap. Of course, it bears noting that some oxygen doping was also at play since the high point of the course was over 3,000’ lower than my home in Colorado.
While the pacing game is very different for shorter races, if your physiology rewards the “diesel engine” approach then longer efforts will always be in your favor.
Eating & Drinking
One metric that I take some satisfaction in reporting is that I consumed zero gels during this event. Friend and founder of Rodeo Adventure Labs Stephen Fitzgerald once quipped that he thinks we all have a finite number of gels that our bodies will allow us to consume in a lifetime, so use them wisely. I slurp down plenty of gels throughout the year, but given that I didn’t have a crew at the event (and I had no interest in flying with 12-hours worth of sports food), I relied exclusively on what was available at the neutral aid station. I took this as a good exercise in going with the flow and fueled throughout the day with PBJ squares, refried bean and cheese quesadilla slices, and took pocket Chips Ahoy cookies, bars, and Welch’s fruit snacks to choke down during the brief straightaways on the course.
After diving deeper into the role electrolytes play in hydration earlier this year, I did fill my one 28-ounce bottle with the diluted Skratch mix available at the aid station between each of my day-time laps. But, as soon as the sun went down and temps dropped, I found myself thirsting for plain water so switched accordingly.
As a final note on fueling, if this event had taken place in warmer conditions (the starting temp was in the 30s, and the high for the day never reached 50), I would have certainly worn a hydration pack with a bladder for easier drinking while riding. However, given the early December date (some shady sections of the course were ice-crusted early on!) and drastic fluctuation in temperatures, I wanted to avoid ever getting too sweaty so as to mitigate later chill once the sun began its early descent. It’s almost impossible to avoid sweating under a pack so I opted to just ride with one bottle in the frame instead.
Bike Setup & Gear
I rode my Merlin Ti Hardtail with a RockShox SID Ultimate 120 mm fork for the event. I was happy to gear for the climbs, since there was never much sustained pedaling on the descents, with a 30T ring up front and 10-52t cassette. I ran mechanical shifting and SRAM hydro brakes (Level), my Whisky No. 9 carbon bar cut to 720 mm (with beloved Ergon GP3 BioKork bar ends) and a PNW Components Loam 125 mm dropper. Maxxis Ikon (2.35”) tires, set up on Whisky No. 9 carbon i30 rims, felt mostly up to the task of maintaining traction on the WNC trails, except in a few muddy corners where most everyone I saw was fighting the slide-out. I could see a tire with slightly more aggressive side knobs being more deft through the twisting terrain.
By the end of the event, my wrists and hands were absolutely hammered. I chalk this up to two factors: 1) I never bothered to reassess my tire pressure as the day warmed up—sheer laziness—and I feel pretty certain that they were too hard much of the second half; 2) all of the long mountain bike rides I have done have been in summer conditions, during which I typically wear a pair of Pearl Izumi padded fingerless gloves. I didn’t factor in how much of a difference it would make to go from these to a pair of mid-weight gloves with no padding. I was still shaking out my sore wrists days after the event so I won’t be making that mistake again!
I rode the last three-plus-hours of the event in the dark with a Fenix PD35 light on my helmet and a Light & Motion VIS Pro 1000 Trail light on my bars—I’ve had both of these lights for a few years now and find both totally satisfactory for my riding needs. The Fenix PD35 has a max brightness output of 1700 lumens and five lighting modes; the Light & Motion VIS Pro Trail has a max brightness output of 1000 lumens and four lighting modes. I only rode with the Fenix on my head while climbing, and switched to the middle setting, then added the Light & Motion (on the second brightest setting) for descents to conserve the charge. I noticed that I inevitably slowed down while descending at night, as the amplified contrast of shadows and light-beam tunnel vision played tricks on my depth perception, but my light setup felt solid. If I’d been tackling the 24-hour event, I would have swapped the Light & Motion for another Fenix PD35R on the bars, as the latter has a longer run time across settings, and kept a couple extra batteries at the ready.
In Closing
The cause driving this event is one close to my heart, but I also enjoyed the ride just for the sake of rallying for a full day on the bike during a time of year when I’d usually beg off. Because of the fundraising element, the race aspect of the event felt less forefront than other events—for me, the lower stakes made for a fun and fulfilling experience during my first mountain bike race., during which I was able to learn a few things to carry over to the next one. And, at the end of the day, I definitely felt like a better rider for it.
