Lumberjack 100 mile (MTB Ultra) 2024

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The Lumberjack 100 is a 100 mile race featuring 85% singletrack terrain and 15% two track fire roads. The race was held on June 15th, 2024 in Wellston, Michigan (Manistee County) at the BigM, XC and Ski Area in the Manistee National Forrest. The race consisted of 3 laps of about a 32 miles, with a couple mile initial paved rollout, totaling about a 100 miles with around 8,000 feet of climbing. Course direction for 2024 was clockwise, which was a third time for me in this direction and the same as in 2018 when it was my first ever 100 mile MTB.

My goal for my 5th attempt at Lumberjack 100 was to finally go sub 8 hours. I dedicated a lot of training time over the past year and thought not only was this possible, but I'd hope to be closer to 7:30 hours. I surpassed my goal and finished in 7:20 hours for 24th overall out of 457! This was with a crash at 1:17:05 where I misjudged the trail direction and ran into a tree. I couldn't decide if the trail went to the left or the right of the tree, so I chose neither and ran directly into the tree. Luckily my computer mount took the brunt of the crash and although a bit banged up, the body and bike were ok to continue. I did however have to put my Wahoo computer in my back pocket and go without metrics for the remaining 6 hours of the race, which was a bit of a disadvantage.

Very happy with my results and finally my fitness, hydration, nutrition and the weather came together for me. I've never "raced" this event and always paced it as a "time trial" monitoring my effort. I may have to change my tactics for 2025 if I have the fitness and see if I can sneak into the top 10! That would definitely be a stretch goal but possibly one worth pursuing.

*Of course my GoPro ran out of battery 5 minutes before the finish.*

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