Non retro, weight weenie, $1300 home built, Chinese carbon mountain bike racer.

Well, I only weighed 55 kg as I’m a small guy. I had on a a fairly large ATV fanny pack that had pouches for tools, a small kayak front pack, a small back pack and several small bike packs. The entire load didn’t add much weight, perhaps 15 kg. The inexpensive Chinese plastic frame and parts didn’t break. The race goes through a park and I loaded up with more food, drinks and a helmet with a light that I had stashed there with friends. Most pundits on the net said that an inexpensive Chinese carbon frame, fork and the other parts weren’t up to this kind of abuse. I’m not sure it would have lasted if a brute rode the stuff I walked and did the jumps. I was pretty impressed with my home built maggot. They don’t make geriatric bicycles so you have to build one yourself, low gearing so you need 2x chainrings so you can have some top end. Lightweight so I used 26 x 3 tires. Lightweight is important as old legs can’t power over rocks or roots on climbs.
 
Every 5 years they have an out and back race. You start the day before, ride the 100+ mile course backwards, you must get to the beginning of the annual 100+ miles race in time for the 7am start and run the Le Mons start then finish the second 100 going the right way. About 30 guys and gals did it. You have to submit a resume before they will let you enter. This may sound like BS but two guys in their mid thirties did the out and back riding single speed. They had bikes with the same gearing. I know them both. One of these guys is a friend of my son-in-law and I met him at my in-laws hunting camp. He was born with one hand and did the out and back 200++ on a single speed. They both either were having the same hallucination or they were really being stalked, at night, by a cougar. In the out and back race advertising they said you had to do the Le Mons start the first day by running backwards. I hope that was a joke. The advertising said you had to use a bicycle for the Le Mons start of the running race. Any bicycle, even a junker, but you must pedal it. I hope that was a joke. The first year a group got hopelessly lost and went through stuff that was much worse than the race. They have or at least had a short commemorative race that follows where the lost guys went before quitting. They also have a dulathon, 60 mile bike race, then a 40 mile run. Also a 100+ and 50++ mile run that starts the day before the mountain bike races. All races follow the same course. I met a guy running the 100, near the end, from Paris. He said he runs it every year and loves it. He was grinning ear to ear in the midnight thunderstorm. The race committee has names for these events that they thought up, something like not a good idea, bad idea, terrible idea and worst idea, etc. The out and back is the worst idea. They get a full house of people who pay them to participate in their mental and physical abuse games.
 
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These organizers have a trilogy. The Marji, The Crusher and The Polar Roll. All sadistic. The Crusher is a 250 mile wilderness gravel ride without support or signage. This year it looks like a new route and there is no cell service where it goes. It uses many of the trails I ride from our house. It starts a few miles from our house. It’s way back in the bush. There is some single track. Terrible climbs, long mud, sand, wade through streams. Then there is the Polar Roll. If it snows overnight before the race then it’s a Polar Push as the machine packed trail gets snowed in. Wade through snow fight downed trees. It’s only been a Polar Push once. It’s billed on their on line information as a ride push. They say, in the on line information, it gets worse until it gets worser. You can also ride the 30 mile and the 15 mile combined ride for dummies but an IQ test is required, or so their web site says. If you complete all three, any time, not necessary in one year, you are an automatic member of the Hall of Pain. They are a secret society and have secret events.
 
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