Not So Interesting

Unless you are participating in PMBAR, you might not find this post too interesting. Some of you out there may find this post very helpful.

I will give some background for those who don’t know but might care. Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race involves 75 teams of two racers (that’s 150 folks for those of you who are having trouble with math this year) racing to Y number of checkpoints out of X checkpoints. In the past, this has been 4 out of 5 checkpoints with one mandatory checkpoint and a two hour time bonus to any team who reaches all five. We won’t really know for sure if it is the same way this year until Saturday morning.

The area involved covers a good portion of the Pisgah National Forest. “The Ranger District” to be exact, it is a unique “race” in that sense. A finishing route will take you anywhere from 55 – 85 miles to complete and the amount of climbing involved is, well let’s just say that if you haven’t met Jesus or your version of God yet and you are doing this race, be prepared to meet your maker. Last year Joe and I had a 70 mile chunk of change and I was scared to add up the altitude change.

When thinking about what to carry for the PMBAR there are some items we have to carry for safety sake and because Eric requires it.

So for sure don’t forget:

Water Filter or Iodine (Personally I drank around 20 liters of water last year, that means 17 of them were filtered from creeks)
Rain Jacket
Emergency Blanket
Map!!!!!!!!!! (if you haven’t heard, I lost it for a little while last year)
Compass
Lighter
Light source (camping light for us last year)
Rear Blinkie
First Aid kit

So that takes care of everything that we are REQUIRED to carry or you can’t even start the race. Last year I carried a ton of food with me.

You should realistically plan on taking enough food for how long you think you will be out in the woods. Last year Joe and I were out on the “course” for a little over 13 hours. So this year I am planning on 12 hours of food. That includes hammer gel, cliff bloks, propel packets (because only water is going in the bladder), peanut butter sandwich and a ton of electrolyte pills.

On the lighter side of things, if this thread hasn’t made you laugh, your laughers are just plain broken.

Peace