MoCo Epic Round-up!

I few days ago I posted up about my preparations for the Montgomery County Mountain Bike Epic www.mocoepic.com.  Today I thought I'd come out from under the pile of work on my desk and post up how it went.

 

The MoCo Epic was another great ride this year.  Calling it a ride is actually selling it really short.  It was a full-on mountain bike festival.  There were rides that were epic, yet doable for people of most skill levels, music, beer, food, stunt cycling performances and a great bike expo area.  

I ran into 3 others who rode a long ways to get to the epic.  Jeff rode from Arlington, for 131 miles total, Baler and I rode from different sides of the DC Metropolitan area, but wound up with just short of 140 miles for the day, but Super Dillon took the cake riding around 150 miles for the day to complete the epic.    I saw a lot of single speeders... and Drevil's amazing single speed fat bike, but I didn't see anyone else riding fixie.  My buddy Ben rode the 35 mile route on his unicycle.  Truly awesome. 

The cool thing about the MoCo Epic is that it can be epic for all kinds of cyclists.  There was a time not that many years ago where 25 miles was epic for me.  This event makes it possible for people to challenge themselves and do stuff that they didn't think was possible! 

Quick observation about riding fixie for that kind of mileage... It is a very interesting prospect. One thing I love about the fat front fixie is that the bike just SCREAMS to blast through, up and over things.  On a 137 mile ride with a rolling time of over 12 1/2 hours, I am not able to ride it that way.  My game plan from the get-go was to do enough to make it over the next hill.  I didn't blast up anything.  I rode to survive.... Not a lot of blasting was done.  There were some times where my legs were saying, "Come on!! You can crush this hill!" and I had to hold back a lot.    That isn't easy when my buddy Sean is up the trail churning out a great pace up a hill!  I did make it home, but there wasn't much left in the tank.  Luckily two of the aid stations were still open on the way home and I got to top-off on gummi bears.  

I can't begin to thank the volunteers and organizers enough for making this festival happen.  It was great to see so many people out having a great time on two wheels.  It was great to reconnect with a few friends.... some I hadn't seen in person since last year's epic.  

What's next?  The MoCo Epic's Volunteer ride is this Sunday.  I'm going to bake some cookies and ride back up to MoCo and say thank you in person. :D