Comparing Times with Neko Mulally // Rock Creek Cranksgiving 2023 Vlog

How much faster are the pros? Let's find out.
Video Script:
Upstate Cranksgiving’s 11 annual race series was primarily located at Neko Mullaly’s bike park, Ride Rock Creek, located just outside of Hendersonville, in Zirconia, NC. There were options to race enduro, downhill and a tiny bike dual slalom race. I was there for the enduro, which could be raced in any category from grom to geezer and E-bike to analog. I raced the Sport Men category for the 2 day enduro - Biscuit and Gravy.
The race start on Saturday did NOT go well for me. It’s actually hilarious how bad it went actually. I decided to start on the bike park side of the mountain because Bark Buster to Strange Beast were the easiest trails so I figured I would start there. I don’t know if I was too chill about the stage because of that or if I didn’t have enough coffee or what, but let’s see if we can learn something from my run…
It was difficult to keep focus after I threw away my run so many times, but after each mess up I shifted my focus from “great you ruined the run” to, let’s get down this stage as fast as you can. It sounds too simple, but it helped greatly. Since enduro results are the culmination of all stage times, it’s prudent to refocus as quickly as possible.
So I made my way to the backcountry trails and started Stage 1 on Milo-Steegen. This weekend was my first time riding these backcountry trails and they’re FUN and very challenging - steep and tight - and all over the mountain conditions were LOOSE. I was considering going clipless for this race, which would have been my second time ever riding trails clipless by the way, but I decided I wanted to be able to easily put my foot down (clip). It’s unfortunate how poorly GoPro captured this but this spot was an absolute trap - you’re turning right but the trail is off camber, and because so many people messed up in this spot there was a rut leading you right into a tree. This was my main focus of the stage - to not get caught in this section. Thankfully I didn’t get caught up here and got 12th out of 31, with a total time of 3:22 -- 17 seconds off the winning time in my category and 41 seconds off pro men winner.
I saved the hardest stage for last, another backcountry trail, called Cheese-burger Paradise. It gets steep with lots of off camber bits and 2 climbs, one of which I decided ahead of time to get off and run. Looking back at the footage, it really was not a smooth run at all with some major mistakes, but the fact that I got 9th on this stage really shows the difficulty of this trail. My time was 3:24, 45 seconds slower than Sports Men winner of this stage and a whole minute slower than the Pro Men winner.
The Sport Men category did not compete on the Pro stage so I used my extra time to pre-ride a couple stages for Sunday. It was my 2nd time ever on Dark Hallow and I mistakenly decided to send the road gap without enough speed and had a close call.
On the following day, I decided to start on stage 2, Bark Buster extended. And you would figure that I would have learned my lesson from Saturday’s run of Bark Buster but my front tire washed out AGAIN in the same exact loose berm. It was a long, pedally stage though, so I kept at it til the end and found myself in the back of the pack, 14th out of the 20 riders that showed up on Sunday.
Next, I stayed on the bike park side for stage 3 on Dark Hallow. Despite my pre-ride mishap, my plan was to send the road gap on my race run if I had enough speed… but honestly it just snuck up on me and I had to do the ride around. Unfortunately I just didn’t know the trail well enough and there’s currently not great signage there… This is a section that I stopped and looked at during my pre-ride and decided to stay right here which worked out great… I’m going to have to stop and look at this section during my next visit to Rock creek because there has to be a smoother line… Got to stay locked into these mandatory ruts in this section… I was just trying to keep it clean down here and at the rock garden coming up. I felt that I rode to my potential for the most part on this stage and ended up 10th, with a time of 3:54 -- 27 seconds slower than the fastest time in my cat and nearly a whole minute slower than Neko who won the Pro category. I have a difficult time imaging going fast enough to take an entire minute off this run, but that’s why they are the pros. It’s unbelievable. I really want to see a full pull run from one of the top pros on Dark Hallow.
On my final run of Day 2, I got a second chance on Milo-Steegen. I chose this to be my final stage in order to save the climb til after completion of all the stages. I forgot to press records before I started the stage but managed to get a finger on the record button during the pedally beginning part of the stage. You’ll notice here that someone must have blown through the tape. If someone intentionally took this route, it must have ...

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