Battle the Bear is alive and well

Bear Cross CountryLakewood, ColoradoMay 13, 2006Online Registration @ Active.comPrintable Registration (Coming soon) Printable Course Map/Description (pdf)

Hellclimbers, I was suprised to find out that although the Battle the Bear race isn't on the MSC schedule this year, they're still having it. This is sort of a double edged sword for me. Do I jump in and do this race, considering the damn weather's always hotter than Mississippi G's disc brake rotor after descending Falcon, or do I avoid the fatigue it'll cost me considering I'll be traveling to Angel Fire the next weekend. A tough question for sure. Maybe I'll jump in it on the Single like the last two years just to see how I do. Make up for last year's poor performance there. Then again, I do claim to have a very specific goal for 2006. Will I risk screwing it up? Hard to say. Only thorough thinking and Kathy Sabine's weather report a couple days before hold the answer. That race is weird for me. I remember 2004 there was a pile of dead animal carcasses next to the first 2 track that was stinking to high heaven. Jeffy and I smelled it a couple days before the race when we were out doing a course recon in the afternoon. Couldn't help but investigate where the stench was coming from. When we got over there we discovered the rotting pile of critters. It was hard to tell just what they were due to the level of decomposition, and we were shaking our heads wondering who had piled them there. Then when race day came and it was 90 degrees you could almost feel the stink as it hit your face passing by the area, and it wasn;t like you could hold your breath with the blistering pace being set on that road. Ahh the memories of races past.