Croom 35/50 Off Road Challange

This past weekend, Theresa and I had the opportunity to participate in the "Croom 35/50 Off Road Challenge". Yes, that's 35 or 50 miles of off road mountain biking. Click here to view the Map (highlighted section is the 35 mile tail). Most people, including me and Theresa, figure that Florida is pretty flat. After all, the parks that we typically ride are built on old sulfur mines with a just a few small hills here and there. Croom, on the other hand, reminded me of riding in Washington with long inclines and crazy descents! It was grueling!
Since we had the choice of either doing 35 or 50 miles, we had decided ahead of time that we were planning on riding the 35 mile trail, but would re-evaluate our decision at the 35-50 mile trail Y.

You could start the race any time between 8:30 and 9:30 in the morning. Croom is about 2 hours away from our home so we were up at 4:30 in order to get everything loaded up, get a shower, and get breakfast. When we left the house, it was pleasant & warm - we both had on shorts and sandals! But, when we got to Croom, it was only about 40 degrees! We were freezing! When the race started the temperature had risen to a scorching 46 degrees. Since we knew it was supposed to be in the high 70's later in the day we decided to start the race in shorts and short sleeve jerseys so we didn't get overheated as the day progressed. Needless to say we were quite cold for the first couple miles.


About 6.5 miles into the course we hit a Y in the trail where you could either take the "easy" route or the "hard" section of trail. We decided to go for the "hard" section. Theresa's front tire ended up in a rut and she landed 10 feet in front of her bike (ouch!) - almost like a head-first slide into home plate! Not wanting to take another fall she didn't want to finish the "hard" section. I wanted to finish it, so I told her to go on taking the regular trail with out me. The trail was only split for a few hundred yards, so we didn't plan on being separated for very long. Shortly after finishing the "hard" section of trial I broke my chain. I busted out the chain tool for the repair and a mere 20 minutes later I was back in the saddle. Unfortunately Theresa thought the "hard" section of trial dropped me off in front of her so she was trying to catch me. In the mean time I was haulin ass trying to catch her. Well we finally found each other about 4 miles later. And yes we were absolutely exhausted with about 25 miles to go.


Every 12 miles they place a rest area (nick named a SAG) that had water, Gatoraid, food...etc. We had a nice stop the first SAG and continued on. The second section of trail was by far the most difficult with crazy climbs and exhausting gradual inclines. We thoroughly enjoyed every downhill section we ran into. They were all a nice break from pedaling up hill. There were quite a few technical sections too - with lots of bumpy steep descents & quick turns in and out of trees.


We reached the second SAG and took our sweet time filling up on Gatoraid and granola bars. There was a bail out trail that would have taken us from this SAG to the parking lot but that was not an option (nevermind that the bailout was 8 miles long anyway - and we only had 11 left to go). We were GOING to finish this. Starting the ride from the second SAG was probably the most difficult thing we've have ever done. I felt like I was dying. It was definitely worse than any point in the half marathon last year. Luckily Theresa was up for leading for a while. So I used all my strength to keep up with her as she lead the way. Once the food kicked in we were good both to go. We struggled a little here and there with muscle fatigue (and probably sheer exhaustion) but we managed to make it to the point where the trail splits - to either continue onto the 50 mile section or last 5 miles of the the 35 mile section. Of course we opted for the 35 mile section and finished the ride in about 5 hours! It was quite a relief to see the parking lot as we approached the end of the trail!


When we finally got home, we celebrated with Champagne and tortilla chips for dinner because we were so exhausted we couldn't make a "real" dinner!


Needless to say, this was quite an adventure! And, yes, we are planning on doing it again next year!