Kirkwood 6 hr Super-D

After having a blast at last years annual 6hr Super D of Kirkwood I was looking forward to do it again this year. My schedule looked good and a bunch of buddies (Schlachter-Factor, Curtis and Will S.) wanted to go as well, so it was on like Donkey Kong.

For those not so familiar with this event a little explanation: You take a lift to the top of the mountain, then ride for a couple of miles mostly downhill but with a good amount of uphill pedalling and repeat that until 6 hours went by.

Last year a bunch of people complained that you could actually bypass the first of the two lifts which was quite a bit faster. So this year they used only one high speed lift everyone had to take. They also had a completely different course so the whole thing was pretty much new to everyone. What I remembered from last time was that you had to do a short road loop to sort out who gets on the lift first - so I prepared for sprinting.

In the starting grid I locked the suspension of my 6" Giant Reign and got ready to kill myself. The tactic worked out and I was the 3rd on the lift. Curtis, of course, was sitting in the first one.

On top of the mountain I was looking forward to a nice descent but no, there was like 1.5 miles of climbing to be done first - in 9000ft of elevation, on loose, sandy ground up a steep trail. Didn't feel it at all in these conditions and got passed by two people immediately and the whole group just pulled away. Oh well, it's 6hr race.

Finally I got to the descent and enjoyed the trail. It was way more gnarly than I expected and I got a bit scared how these loose, off-camber switchbacks with a good amount of exposure would feel like in 4 hours from now. Later I hit way smoother single track through the woods and there were a lot of hikers - that didn't seem right. At some point I asked if they had seen other riders and they said no. Ok, I was off-track but halfway down the mountain so I continued down. Eventually I hit the highway and rode back into the Kirkwood village. Darn!

Back at the finish line they told me I'm good but they won't count my first lap. Oh well. Luckily I came there at the same time the first guys came down the right way. So I didn't have a lot of slow folks in front of me for my next lap.

After my second lap, this time on the right track, they told me that they actually would count my first lap. Apparently I wasn't the only one who made this mistake. So I was back in the game. I figured there couldn't be that many people in front of me and that I should be able to place on the podium. In the following laps I got pretty familiar with the course and it wasn't so scary after all, more like really fun. I was still dying in the upper part of the course and was walking most of the steep sections, every lap.

Towards the end the course became pretty rutted and really sketchy to ride in places. I washed out once but didn't hurt myself. All in all the rest of the race was unspectacular except for a stuck derailleur and some air loss in my rear tire.

So I ended up 6th overall with 7 laps and won the 30-39 age category. Curtis won the pro category with 8 laps (that dude is an animal) and Scott churned out 6 laps. We were all pretty toast afterwards but everyone enjoyed the race.

Good times, can't wait for next year.
Erik

PS: On the way back we made sure the Wrong Way spirit stays alive (for the veterans - note the font):