Notes
Bile Leg of the Baxter Backwoods Duathlon. Talking to another rider, I was warned about the long and "steep" climb. Also to make sure you down shifted before the hairpin turn onto the trail. Then Adam, the Baxter race director, warned us about not starting out too fast on the 3 mile dirt road and that intermediate riders may have to walk a few of the final climbs. Then he said the new downhill trail was legit and burly with some rock features. Therefore I figured I'd be walking part of the uphill and part of the downhill.
I went out fairly conservatively on the dirt road and made the turn in good shape, a few others had to pedal around trying to shift. I kept the pace up for most of this section. There were some steep hills but then it would level off and give you time to recover. I only walked one section, partly because there was a guy in the way walking his bike and partly because I wanted to save my legs for the run. I could have made it up without a foot down I think. The downhill section was fun, but pretty long. I was able to roll over all the rock features. Only got passed once, but the guy gave me the heads up about staying to the right on a tricky rock section that was blind at the top going into it. Good advice. Only had one foot down when I clipped out and got a little squirrelly once but didn't crash. Made it back to the dirt road and rode hard back to the transition area. Looking back I could've gone harder on the dirt road. A fun ride though.