Arkansaw High Country Race Day 1 Fayetteville to Pilot Rock / Opening Salvo

 

After chickening out of even attempting the Arkansaw High Country Race in 2019 and only completing 667 miles of the 1,030-mile course as an individual time trial (ITT) in 2020, I trained and equipped myself to go for an ITT this May (2021). Our COVID-adjusted semester ended in early May, and I reasoned that my best bet would be to attempt it before the debilitating June heat started to kick in[1]. I drove to Fayetteville on May 12th and stayed at the funky, kitschy Graduate hotel which constitutes the start-finish line. I decided to run the course counterclockwise so that I could still be relatively fresh and fat during the long early stretch from Russellville to Hatfield (about 200 miles) with very sparse food, water, and shelter options. Luckily, those first four lean days coincided with some of the best weather I could possibly hope for, comparatively dry and cool. The weather reports I started to track in the days before the race predicted that I would start to encounter scattered rain showers amounting to between.25 and .7” daily, beginning on the long trek from Little Rock up to Mountain View on the 5th day. I broke down daily goal distances with plans for food, water, and rest that would amount to a finish in about nine and a half days.    

Day 1 Fayetteville to an informal campsite near Pilot Rock Mountain. 121 miles


At 7 a.m. in brisk 50-degree air, I turned on my GPS Spot tracker that would show up as a blue MM icon on the Trackleaders website and rolled out of town on my Chumba Terlingua titanium all-road bike. The course gradually, then steeply climbed up to White Rock Mountain over a four-hour stretch and then bombed down to the Mulberry River, eventually popping out on Highway 23 near Cass. 



Here was the first place I planned poorly. I knew that the general store at Oark closed at 4 pm, but I assumed the route would take me right past the store at Turner Bend, where I would top off on food and water. When I got on Highway 23 and realized the store at Turner Bend was behind me, I put my head down and chugged to make it to Oark by 3 pm. I walked in sweaty and out of breath and the guy working the cash register shouted, “How ‘bout a burger?” I said, “I´d like three!” I sat down and ate one burger meal for lunch and put the other two wrapped burgers in a musette that I slung over my shoulder. One of the big mistakes I’ve made in the past on races like this was to not take enough food with me when I get a chance to resupply. When we bikepack we typically pack our bags to the gills and have no room for that extra meal, condemning ourselves to run low on calories[2]. My solution this year was to carry a small extra bag to carry the food I couldn’t eat right at the moment. Those second and third burgers made supper that night and breakfast the next morning, not the most appetizing thing ever, but I needed the calories to replenish the long first day and fuel me to Russellville and beyond the next day. Even though most days I was riding 12 – 15 hours, far fewer than the big guns who do this race in about five days, I was still burning up to 8 - 10,000 calories per day. When you sit down to eat at a restaurant and really throw down on as much food as you can, you generally only eat about 2,000 calories at a meal, and you won’t be passing restaurants five times a day on the High Country Race. For me, this race seemed to be a constant fight to take onboard as many calories as possible, knowing I’d usually come up short.  

I found an informal campsite on public land along the trail near Pilot Rock, rolled out my bivvy and air mattress[3], got out of my sweaty cycling gear and into dry clothes, and ate my dinner burger in the gathering darkness.

Despite the slight miscalculation at Turner Bend, the first day had gone according to plan.

 

 


[1] In my June 2020 ITT I spend several hours per day over multiple days riding in temps of over 100 degrees and high humidity, which really broke me down mentally and physically

[2] Of course, one could bring freeze-dried camp meals, a stove and fuel, but I opted not to go that route in order to save weight and space.

[3] I brought a down jacket and down pants to act as defacto “sleeping bag” lining within my thin Gore-Tex bivvy sack. To run with a little lighter load, I did not bring a tent or a tarp.


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