Big M(istake)

I met up with the normal group I ride with this past weekend at the Big M Ski Area in Manistee National Forest, just west of Wellston, MI. It was a simple 30 minute drive from my in-law's place in Manistee... a bit more for the others coming from a cabin in Baldwin and one coming from the Hudsonville area that morning. I was there promptly at 9AM but a little tire mishap caused the others to be about a hour late. In the meantime, I just mixed up some HEED and took my time talking to a few people in the lot and getting stuff together. I think we hit the trail just before noon.

Our plan was to ride the 25 mile long Lumberjack 100 route twice for a total of 50 miles. Of course, from the get-go we were doomed to mess that up. The trails at Big M are quite confusing at first but made even more confusing due to a race scheduled there for the next day.

We started riding and began to follow pink flags staked into the ground. I don't think we even took a second thought as to where we were going, go we tried to make the best of it after it dawned on us we were following the race course and not the Lumberjack route (though one of the trail sections we were riding was called "Lumberjack". Eventually we climbed up a slow grade and ended up finding the race crew marking a turn-around for the race. They stood just off a lookout over the entire forest. Great views about 270 degrees around. The remaining disappeared back down the trail. The crew informed us that the parking lot was at the bottom of the sandy downhill... right in front of us. So we sucked it up and went down the most crazy downhill I've ever had the "pleasure" to descend. It was all sand and it seemed really steep. But the crazy part was the tall stumps and large rocks smack in the middle of the trail. Smack in the middle. I actually stopped to regain my composure a couple of times. Hairy for me... even hairier for those racers, I would imagine.

So our first lap was essentially a little bit more than the race course. Hmm...

We immediately launched back into the trail to find our way to the outer loop. We found it and noticed the little pink flags that routed us back to the inner loop the first time around. Not this time. Onward to the outer loop!

The outer loop is a great flowing trail. The signs become rustic but they are all fairly simple and straight forward... once you understood what they meant. We also happened to do the Fire Tower trail on the way back. The outer is all strewn with leaves and a lot of sticks. The sand on the out lying areas is no where near as brutal as those on the inner loops. Good for us, I suppose. After this lap, we took a little lunch break.

For the second lap, we decided to do the loop backward. Starting at Cappers, up through Firetower and on to the Outer Loop. All was well and good until I began to blow up... or rather my legs did. By mile 5, I knew this would be a painful ride but I made the choice to continue despite my better judgment. I began to lag back a bit over the next several miles. I could feel the three main areas of my upper leg muscles begin to all go. The inside quads went first with visible involuntary contractions at the head of the muscle, just above the knee; first the left and then the right. Followed by the hams with the focus of the problem on the inside portion behind the knee. Ouch. And eventually, the outside quads... the big ones... began to scream, "FOUL!" By mile 12 or so, there was no escape route out as we were at the farthest point on the trail from the parking lot. Nice. I rode as much as I could but needed to actually get off the bike and walk a bit to stretch the muscles out. This was better than stopping and sitting since doing so would allow the muscle to seize and that is the last thing I wanted. So all I kept doing was moving forward. No way out.

By the time I got to a point where I could actually take a short cut, we were directed from the red loop (Outer) that suddenly turned to yellow. So we back-tracked and broke out the map. A faint trail branched to the left to continue the Outer Loop. But it was overgrown and there were no signs that the lead group... or anyone for quite some time had gone down this trail. It was Demon's Inferno. I had no taste for it at the moment... and neither did the other riders. So down the yellow trail we went; Girl's Night Out was the name of the trail. It dumped us back onto Lumberjack and eventually to the parking lot. I hadn't gotten my new computer yet, so relying on others that I rode with, we completed about 45 miles.

Done. Sore. And very soon, stiff. I wound down, packed up and waved good-bye to good ol' Big M... until next time.