2012 Ouachita Challenge Trip Report

As much as I love the Ouachita Challenge event, it's always a great trip overall up to Arkansas getting into a little bit of mountains and hanging out with great folks for a long weekend. Since Raine is 20+ weeks pregnant, a 7+ hour drive and chasing Ben around while I raced wasn't the best plan so they stayed home this year. I rode up with my friend John from work, and friend of his who also stayed with us last year, Marc. They picked me up about 7AM Saturday, and we rolled into Oden at about 2:30 or so. I got to see my little brother Luke finish the tour, then pick up our packets and head to the cabin. We had a great cabin at Riverview Cabins & Canoes, just a mile from the event area and start/finish line. The cabin was really nice and right on the river with a great view.

View from the cabin.

Chris from Shreveport and a friend of his were staying with us. We all settled in, then I went out for a little spin to loosen the legs up. I went up the finish road and did a little singletrack, then rolled back down to the cabin. When I got back Chris had been trying to work on his bike, and couldn't get his brakes to work right. I tried to check them out and wound up making them worse. We needed a bleed kit or a new brake at that point, neither of which we had on hand. We all went up to dinner and ate, then found Carl from Lafayette had a bleed kit with him and was good at bleeding brakes so he followed us back and fixed the brakes. He and his group left out and we all hung out for a while doing final prep, then went to bed.

Sunday after finishing my race I hung out to see other folks finish, Marc came in about half an hour after me then John about an hour later. Lisa came in for 5th place in the women's class, she did really great and we were all proud of her. We spun (raced) back up to the cabin to relax for the rest of the day. We went down to the river and soaked for a while in the cold water, it was good for the legs and to cool ourselves off after the hot day. Then we walked back up to the cabin and I sat in the hot tub for a while. We had cooked up a frozen lasagna so we ate that, then just chilled out for the rest of the evening. Spike was having a Star Wars marathon so we watched the second half of Empire Strikes Back and then Return of the Jedi. That was fun and brought back some memories. Then it was off to bed for the long drive home.

The drive home was pretty uneventful except for driving through a bunch of hard rain and my BMC almost getting rear-ended by a hummer in Lufkin. That was scary. It's good to be home to Raine and Ben, now it's time to start some intensity work to get faster in the XC races.