MTBGuru blog

That E100 was something else. Read here more about the gorgeous trails, the Spiral of Pain, the Aspen Labyrinth and how I’ll need to revisit this one…

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Next saturday the Endurance 100 Solo, aka the E100 is on in Park City. Organizer Boris Lyubner’s tagline is ‘mind over mountains’ and promises to deliver ‘100 miles of technical, alpine singletrack’ - needless to say this has made be quite enamored with this event and a couple weeks ago I finally decided to sign up. We’ll have to see how my mind deals with the mountains, as it will be my maiden offroad 100-mile race. The course looks great - 90% singletrack, not too much fireroad - but intimidating.

This is how it looks like in Google Earth:

There are 5 ’stages’, the 100 mile race consists of stages 1, 2, 3 (times two), 4 and 5 (the latter two are in fact also two laps of the same loop). Follow the links to check out the separate trip pages we created for the stages. And here is the overall 100 mile course (embedded map below). There’s also a 50 mile (stages 1, 2, 3) and 100 km event (1, 2, 3 and 4).

Needless to say, you should check out the official website to get all the latest info if you consider signing up. See you in Utah next week if you do!

The Shasta Summit Century is definitely one of the most scenic road rides you can think of. Clear lakes, winding forest roads, interesting geological features and of course the towering giant herself, they’re all there. Add to that for Californian standards fairly good road conditions with sparse vehicular traffic, a few real thrilling descents, a flawlessy organized event by the local cycling club (thank you Mountain Wheelers) and you have the makings of a great weekend trip to California’s North.

But it does have some venom in its tail: the main climb, a 14 mile grunt on Everitt Memorial Highway along the flanks of the big volcano, gaining 4200 feet and dropping you at 7700 feet of altitude, is at the very end of the ride - check out that profile, which is of the regular century - there’s also a 135 mile ‘long’ option.
Upon summitting, make sure to save some oxygen for the descent - it’s one of the funnest downhill runs on skinny tires around.
More stuff and photos on this trip page…

Technorati Tags: cycling, Mount Shasta

We’ve added a link to the trip page in the embed code that you can use to publish a map on your own site. See screenshot below - ‘Trip details’ will redirect you to the actual trip page.