Chapter 4: The CrusherEX 50 Run

Intro:

The CrusherEX 50 Run. "Do hard things." This is the mantra of the 906 adven...OMG, there's a moose on the trail!

Doug, "Get my picture with the moose!"

Feeling cute, might delete later (terrible timing on the moose pic for this one, it's the black dot in the middle of the pic):

Starting Line - Forestville Trailhead:

Pic for go time:

Checkpoint #1 - Hogback:

Damn the bikers were having a tough time on hogback. Trail shoes, no bike, running/hiking Hogback mountain was easy.

Not surprisingly, the trail was quite dark and foggy descending hogback. Lights were needed for spotting the reflectors on the trees and identifying where the trail was going. The darkness was short lived. By mile 4, we were out of the swampy area and darkness.

Checkpoint #2 - Forestville Chimney:

Again, to no surprise, climbing the trail at top of the world without a bike went really smooth. A half mile after that, we got our pics with the glorious forestville chimney.

Mile 6 - Mile 40 (not checkpoints):

The section from mile 7 to 8 contains some railroad tracks and single track. After running the railroad track section, riding a bike down it seems even that much more insane. Shortly after this, Rod took a spill on the single track. We accessed the situation, and the trail seemed to be ok after taking the hit, so we continued on.

At mile 11, Rod and I expected to meet up with the SAG...they weren't there. Not really an issue though, we both had plenty of water and kept moving forward. We may have been there a little faster than expected at 2:20 into the event including getting through the Hogback summit. Just before mile 15, our SAG was waiting in a parking lot right before the next gravel turn off. At this point, we were roughly 3 hours and 15 miles into the run.

Also, our SAG was late due to helping bikers up Hogback and then proceeded to get lost going back to Forestville trailhead 😂.

The next ten miles went by in a flash. The roads were gravel or two track paths, with a couple water crossings, but the miles flew by getting to our next SAG point. When we arrived, Doug and Stacy were grilling burgers for the crushers going by, it's a real shame I don't have a pic. We made this a quick stop for snacks and immediately headed out as the next SAG point was only 2.5 miles up road.

Arrival at SAG point mile 27, close to 5:15 into the run:

At this point, the run was tough. My legs were absolutely on fire. Since this is crusher, I packed Advil. Here is my crusher math at this point of the run:

• 2 Advil usually always works
• 3 Advil would definitely do the job
• Take 4 to be certain

Todd rolled up on our stop:

From here, there would be another 5 miles until we could reach SAG again after the climb on mile 32. The next 5 miles went a lot better. When we reached the mile long climb from 31 to 32, Rod and I passed several bikers...though the bikers passed us back very quickly. At this point, we were rolling. We've covered 32 miles of the event in exactly 6 hours. The next eight miles looked easy on paper, smooth gravel roads with no steep climbs. Plus, our SAG was stopping every two miles, awesome. Stacy got a pic before heading out:

I was wrong, this eight miles was treacherous. I've ran 32 miles 3 times in my life. I knew I was entering unknown territory but this was terrible. This eight miles took 1:45 to cover. For me, the Advil was wearing off and the difficulty of the run was back. Rod was the moderator at this point. He would call the walking points on the uphills so we wouldn't bury ourselves into the pain cave and not be able to recover.

I can't complain too much though. We did reach a small goal of the run, to start trail 14 eight hours into the run.

Checkpoint #3 - Chunky Summit:

Mile 40 was our last SAG stop with a vehicle, but Doug jumped on his MTB to provide SAG to the finish, which was awesome.

Around 7:50 into the run, we headed up chunky summit. I made it about 1.5 miles into the trail where I proceeding to kick a rock, hit the dirt, and complete a full somersault. Other than looking really dumb, I was back on my feet quickly and we continued on.

Shortly after this, we had our moose photo shoot:

After about 10 minutes of waiting, the moose moved off the trail and out of sight. We proceeded up the trail. Rod points out, how does an animal that gigantic just disappear into the woods without making a noise. At that point, we realized it was about 10 feet off the north side of the trail directly beside us. We were back to pure silence for the next 100 feet.

The chucky summit sign 😒

After doing all three rides, how do two runners and a mountain biker miss the chunky summit sign? OBV, too much moose talk. In any case, we descended trail 14 to the large mud hole, realized we missed the sign, climbed back up the trail about a half mile and got the pics. Pics around mile 46, 9:35 into the run:

The rest of the run was pretty uneventful. Nvm, this is crusher. More water crossings, totally soaked my shoes for the final 4 miles...Rod was very smart for taking his shoes off rather than attempting to find the high walking spots. More hills to walk, more cussing, more energy foods, more water, etc.

The Finish Line - Forestville Trailhead:

Total time: 10:39:29

Total distance: 51.73 miles

Total elevation: 4,154 feet

Strava: The CrusherEX 50 Run

No way Rod and I could run the crusherEX at that time without the SAG support. Doug and Stacy giving up their weekend to follow us on a run was as unselfish as it gets. I owe them both some huge favors at some point.

Outro:

That was it, the last part Rod and I needed to complete to get the crusher fist. What a journey:

• Three trips to the U.P.
• 56:01:05 time spent crushing
• Biked 411 miles
• Ran 52 miles
• 27,618 feet climbed
• Unbearable amount of clif and infinit products consumed
• One or two swear words
• Flipping off Todd twice
• Teammates completing the crusher fist ✊

Next up on Rod and I's to do list, completing Marji Gesick. Time to start training.

Chapter 3: The CrusherEX 100

Intro:

It's 8:40am on 7/25/2020, I've crashed my bike and I'm now laying face first in a water crossing. I'm soaked, head to toe. This time, I'm 22 miles and 156 minutes into the ride, a bit further than last time. Once again, Rodney is waiting on me to pick my sorry ass up out of another creek and ride this damn bike.

F those water crossings.

Organization is Key:

With Rod and I already completing The CrusherEX 225 and The CrusherEX 40, the hundred miler was next on our to do list.

We've got this down. Accurate amount of food, plus a little extra, the right amount of water storage, a filter for Yellowdog Creek, tools, spare parts, and the checkpoint list:

Even better, with the CrusherEX being on your own, we adjusted our start time from 7:00am to 6:00am to get another hour of riding in before the heat picked up too much.

The Starting Line, Forestville Trailhead:

At 6:04am, we headed out to tackle this adventure.

Hogback Summit:

We topped Hogback summit in about 23 minutes from the start line:

Rod's view on Hogback hasn't changed at all:

Q&A vid about this: What does hogback have to do with mountain biking?

I'm not certain how fast karma works, but Rod took a spill coming down Hogback. I checked up on Hogback, it seemed to sustain the hit ok.

For comparison, when we rode this on the 225, it took 94 minutes to get to mile 5 after the top of the world climb. Somewhat knowing the course, we reached the same point in 64 minutes. At this point in the day, I thought we were off to the races.

Roadside Spring:

Getting to the roadside spring should have been uneventful, but instead I crashed in a water crossing as described in the intro. When I crashed in a water crossing on the 225, I was unsure what happened. This time, I know exactly what happened. The crossing was about 30 feet long and 8 inches deep in the line I chose with a rock base and clear water. I plowed the front tire straight into a rock that was just under sticking out of the water, stopping the bike, spinning out the rear tire, and immediately dropping to the ground similar to slipping on ice. Luckily, I used my elbow and forearm to catch myself on a rock 🙄. Falling off the line also meant I fell into the deeper section. TBH, hitting the water was like hitting the edge of a pool as a kid. My arm was stinging like crazy but I needed to get back on the bike and push forward.

Also, the bike shifted like garbage the rest of the ride. By the end, the 42t and 10t cogs would not stay in gear. It's gonna need some work.

Enough of the second water crossing crash.

The roadside spring was great. Temps had already reached 80 degrees by the time we got there and the cold water was very refreshing.

From here we refilled our water and headed out.

Snowplow:

This time, finding the snowplow was uneventful. At this point, we were 4 hours and 17 minutes into the ride and feeling pretty good about getting through the rest.

Yellowdog Crossing (and Mosquito Gluch):

Covering the distance to yellowdog crossing was a bit slower than anticipated. The heat was turning up, the roads were dry, sandy, and slow. Nothing too terrible. We crossed the creek at exactly 6 hours and 30 minutes into the ride.

At the crossing, I broke out the sawyer micro filter and an 1 liter water bottle. We filtered nearly 4 liters of water in about 15 minutes topping off all bottles and packs, then headed up mosquito gulch.

Riding mosquito gulch with daylight and tire tracks significantly reduces the time frame. On the 225, we pushed bikes for nearly 2 miles through there. We still pushed about a half mile, but we got through the gulch quickly and thought we were on our way to get this done.

The Mojave Desert:

As we're leaving the forest area of mosquito gulch, Rod references that were entering the Majove desert. I'm sure anyone riding in the eastern US can likely vouch for the heat on that Saturday. This section from mile 73 leaving mosquito gulch to mile 107 entering the chunky summit was tough as it gets for any crusher ride I've done (3 previous). The wahoo measured over 90 degrees for this entire stretch.

While we both had ridden the roads once, we didn't experience the combination of heat, powdery sand, and passing traffic kicking up massive clouds of dirt. We both had unplanned stops. Tipped over attempting to force the bikes through deep sand and pushed our bikes way too much. We both drank a significant amount of water and it was getting obvious we didn't have enough to finish at this rate.

Luckily, the route went by some houses and we crossed a red house at mile 92 with people in the yard. Here is a pic of us taken from the homeowners begging for water:

The homeowners let us fill our waterpacks from their hose, and after a 10-15 minutes of chatting, we found out they have relation living Perrysburg, OH. Even in the middle of Nowhere, MI, you can still find out it's a small world.

From there, things didn't get and easier, mile 98 on a chunky sandy descent next to telephone poles:

Getting to mile 107 was absolutely terrible. It took us 3 hours and 12 minutes (total time) to cover 34 miles. For all I know, I'm still out there and writing this blog is a hallucination.

Chunky Summit:

The previous two blogs, I've raved about chucky summit and I'm going to continue to rave. This section has quite a bit of tree coverage. After being in the boiling sun for over three hours, we finally got some relief. Referencing the temps graph above, this was huge. We didn't have any power to push through this section fast, but at least we could ride the bikes with a break from the relentless sun. 😒:

Drained and tired, we actually took a break at the chunky summit sign for a few minutes to cool off. The last six miles ticked off pretty quick riding the trails back to the Forestville trail head. Looking back, every adventure ride should end like the last 12 miles of the crusher. This section takes the mind off the difficulties of the journey, the day, the year, and becomes just an enjoyment of riding bikes. Profile of that last 12 miles:

The Finish Line, Forestville Trailhead:

Done.

Stats:

• 119 miles
• 6,400 of elevation
• 11:37 total time
• Strava Link: The CrusherEX 100

Outro:

This ride was described as "The hundred miler is the best of the worst". Traversing hogback, the water crossings, the endless miles of sand, mosquito gulch, and chunky summit, all in 100 miles is an absolute action packed adventure.

This marks 3 crusher events finished, one to go: The CrusherEX 50 Run on 8/29.

Chapter 2: The CrusherEX 40

Intro:

On 7/28/2020, Rod Palmer and I took on The CrusherEX 40. A couple weeks prior, we rode The CrusherEX 225. So on paper, The CrusherEX 40 looks quite easy compared to the last event and can quickly be knocked out. Two checkpoints, no hogback, and only 11~12 bonus miles on the bike. This should be 🎂.

Checkpoint list:

The Starting Line, Forestville Trailhead:

Not much to say about the start. We showed up, grabbed selfies, and headed out on the adventure at 8:51am.

Forestville Chimney:

Eliminating Hogback on the start of the crusher creates a completely different ride. Forestville road is an excellent road for dirt/gravel riding and the single track getting to the check point is awesome. There is a short bike push getting over the top of the world, but it's really short. Any crusher participant would almost agree, it's a pleasant push.

The chimney:

There is quite the distance from these two checkpoints, but the journey is incredible. There are creek crossings, trails, abandoned roads, and the scenery is absolutely beautiful. My favorite part is a climb at mile 31. Winding and chunky with a few punchy spots:

Chunky Summit:

About halfway through the last 12 miles of The CrusherEX route is the infamous chunky summit you poor bastards sign:

In my opinion, this 12 mile stretch of riding is what adventure riding is all about. The trail appears to be for atv's and jeeps, but lets ride our bikes there anyway 😁. The hills, descents, and rocks of chunky summit are just a blast to ride. The last five miles into Forestville is getting well packed and it's just a cruise in the woods. Every adventure ride should end like this.

The Finish Line, Forestville Trailhead:

That finishing selfie:

Ride Stats:

• 52 miles
• 3,600 feet of elevation
• 4:26 total time
• Strava link: The CrusherEX 40

Outro:

The CrusherEX 40 advertises as a "Perfect introduction into the community". I first read this as, yeah right, it's prolly 40 miles of hell, but it's a lot shorter than the others. Afterwords, I can say this route is awesome, especially since I don't ride the U.P. much. Having a route laid out in this manner makes for an incredible adventure. Riding a full suspension bike on the route made the MTB sections that much more fun. Rides like this always end with wanting more.

With all that said above, onto chapter 3, The CrusherEX 100.

Chapter 1: The CrusherEX 225

Intro:

It's 7:20am on 7/7/2020. I've just crashed my bike and now I'm laying face first in a creek bed. I'm soaked, head to toe. I'm 80 minutes into a 36 hour time limit. I'm 4 miles into a distance of 247 miles. Three friends are now waiting on me to pick my sorry ass up out of that creek and attempt to ride this damn bike.

F that first four miles, F that bike, F that creek, the riding friends are okay, and F this ride.

How the hell did I get there:

I rode 2019 Crusher 225. The crusher was really hard. Dealing with Covid is harder. The 906 adventure team really stepped up with changing the format to allow participants to ride the course anytime between July 1st and October 1st with trackers and checkpoints. Now, I just needed some peeps to ride with. Some friends chatted about this, and we completed some serious training rides in preparation, but no one committed until 6/28. I received a text from Doug Metzger that he's signing up and we agreed to ride on 7/7. Doug had some questionable commitment:

A few texts later, Chris Marquardt and Rod Palmer were in for this ride as well. Everyone completed the normal prep work to get their bikes ready for this adventure, and I made a cheat sheet to keep the checkpoint selfies on my mind:

The Starting Line, Forestville Trailhead:

Slightly before 6:00am on 7/7/2020, the four of us were dropped off at the Forestville trailhead. I seen another crusher beginning their journey in the parking lot, but didn't get a chance to chat as we were still getting our group arranged. Pre-ride pic:

Crushers left to right:

• Doug Metzger
• Rod Palmer
• Chris Marquardt
• Chris Holmes

At exactly 6:00am, we pedaled out onto Forestville Road to begin this journey, and promptly blew the first turn on the course at mile 1 missing the single track and having to turn around. This is going to be a long day.

Hogback Summit:

The Crusher facebook page heavily warned that Hogback Mountain was a hike-a-bike. Todd warned our group, that if you don't like completing hogback mountain, then you might as well quit, because the ride isn't getting any easier. Here we are:

Climbing up Hogback with frame bags that filled the triangle of the bike was quite the chore, but the bikes got up there and the morning view was breathtaking:

Here's what we weren't warned about, how tough the next 3 miles were going to get. We were pushing our bikes, riding through creek crossings, and twisting through trails. Mostly, we were pushing our bikes. It sucked. In this mess, I crashed in that creek crossing. Did I say it sucked?

Our group hit the first dirt/gravel road, and Doug calls out to me, "How's our pace?" I tab through the GPS. We've covered 4.9 miles in 94 minutes total time. I reply, "The pace doesn't work out to finishing in 36 hours."

After this, the miles really started rolling. Oh wait, now our group is riding on railroad tracks that were left in the woods and someone machete'd a 8 inch path for half a mile 😒. This is going to be a long day.

Roadside Spring:

Eventually, the route curators showed some mercy and gave us some gravel/sand roads and we finally were rolling toward the roadside spring. There was even some pavement. Through this paved section, we came across the crusher at the start. Her name was Lois Smith. She was rolling a bearclaw on thunderburts 👌 and the chamios was cut out of her bibs 😱. She was unable to convince any of us on going this route with the bibs. We rolled together for a bit the next several miles. The pavement was short lived and turned into gravel/sand. Around mile 20, Rod took a spill on one of the wooden bridges. I didn't exactly see what happened, but the bridge took the hit from Rod like a champ.

The pipe is exactly as described. Doug's letting me know I'm number one:

Snowplow:

You would think taking a friggen selfie with a snowplow would be uneventful, but nooooooooo. Mile 38 there's an orange snowplow. Someone called out, that's not it. Then my brain engages, I'm getting a selfie anyways.

So we stop, take our pics and roll:

We did discuss that the plow was the wrong color and too nice compared to the facebook post we could remember. Also, having a checkpoint that's for sale seems pretty brutal, but this is the crusher. For all we know, that is Todd's number on the for sale sign or they are giving crushers the opportunity of purchasing an entire checkpoint. Either way, were not riding till mile 44 only to turn around.

Our team eventually found the correct checkpoint. At this point, we're 43 miles into the ride, and our total time is 376 minutes. Mathematically, we might finish exactly at 36 hours. This is going to be a long day.

Arvon Mailbox:

Here's a good description of getting to the Arvon mailbox. Hill, hill, hill, hill, hill, hill, hill, hill, but at least the roads have more gravel than sand. Distance: 71 miles. total time: 513 minutes. Finally, we were making foward progress and ahead of the pace needed to beat the 36 hour cut off. Doug was given some private time with the mailbox:

Huron River Crossing:

Getting to the Huron River crossing was a time killer. There was sand, water stops, heat, sand, more heat, more sand, then finally a pushing a bike through sand that seemed to go forever. Crossing the river:

After crossing the river, a couple riders changed their socks, we ate, attempting to clean up what we could, then continued on pushing our bikes through sand. We finally started pedaling our bikes out of that area after 7:15pm. At this point, our total mileage was 110 miles and we were past 13 hours into the ride. The morale was definitely low as we all were aware L'Ance was still 35 miles away and that was our planned long break with ride support for food and water. To misquote Doug, "The awesomeness of this ride has long past."

L'Ance (not a checkpoint):

Shortly after getting out of that sand next to Lake Superior, we hit pavement and it stayed pavement all the way to L'Ance. This section of the ride was a game changer. We didn't hammer this, we just paced it. Let the legs turn over, let the muscles relax a bit and just pedaled. We took a short break at a road side carry out for about 15 minutes, but our group got to L'Ance at 9:40pm.

At L'Ance, our wives were waiting with lunch and fresh water. Here, we took a break. We ate lunch, changed socks, dried our shoes, and cleaned up a bit. During our stop, Lois rolled through about 9:50pm. Her mother stopped by and asked if we'd ride with her through the night. I had doubted we'd catch up, she looked pretty strong when she went by. We headed out from here at 10:15pm ready to take on the night:

McCormick Outhouse:

There must have been a lot of mercy given in the course design for getting to the McCormick Outhouse. There was a lot of climbing from L'Ance to the outhouse, but the gravel roads were actually gravel. To my surprise, we caught Lois within an hour. OBV, she soft pedaled this until we caught up. During this section, I was trying to push, push, push, but Doug insisted on getting a moon shot. I have to admit, the cell phone pic captured the moon way better than I expected:

Finding the McCormick outhouse at night consisted of 5 riders, with helmet lights, soft pedaling for two plus miles trying not to miss it. At mile 171, behold it's glory underneath and behind that sign:

Yellowdog Crossing (and mosquito gulch):

Getting to the Yellowdog crossing went great. We plucked away the miles between the gravel and pavement. The two miles of sand getting to the crossing even rolled smoothly. Slow, but not bike pushing. We had a stop at the crossing for water top off and reapplying the mosquito spray, for those who had it.

At 5:15am, we pedaled out of the creek crossing and headed to the mosquito gulch. In comparison, mosquito gulch is worse this year. Last year, I rode most of this section. I pushed the uphill sand sections, but I was able to ride the rocks even though I was un-clipping frequently. This year, instead of sand filling in the cracks between all the rock chucks, it was mud. Every bit of dirt in the entire gulch was mud. For the first two miles of the three miles of mosquito gulch, I pushed my bike. I couldn't even stay with the group, I had to push as fast as I could as the mosquitoes were relentless. For the last mile, Rod and I soft pedaled to go slightly faster than the mosquitoes. At mile 207, we regrouped. We pedaled out of here at 6:15am, with daylight to ride in. At this point, Lois stayed back and let our group head out.

Chunky Summit:

The Crusher advertised that chunky summit was back by unpopular demand. Mike Peiffer, a HAMR finisher, said chunky summit would be very memorable. Let me be clear, riding chunky summit is friggen awesome. It's the most five miles of fun I had the entire ride. Hills, rocks, dirt, descents, basically, it's 5 miles of an 8 foot wide MTB trail and we hammered it out. At this checkpoint, we met Chad Mills and he got a group pic. If you look close, you can see the checkpoint sign over top of Chris's left shoulder:

The Finish Line, Forestville Trailhead:

After riding through a few more mile of sand and winding paths, the glorious pole barn of the Forestville trailhead appeared. We finished. 245 miles (on GPS only) and 29 hours 20 minutes total time. That was a long day. Strava: 2020 CrusherEX 225.

Crushers, left to right:

• Chris Marquardt
• Lois Smith
• Chris Holmes
• Doug Metzger
• Rod Palmer

Turns out Todd Poquette was at the finish line. We said hi:

Lois Smith's CrusherEX Blog, check it out.

Outro:

IDK what happened crossing the creek at mile four. The water was clear, about 8 inches deep, and the rock base was clearly visible. Riding across, I'm not even certain what happened. The wheels were sliding out left and I was crashing right. Sploosh! Four friggen miles, soaked head to toe 😡. This blog is chapter one, as I'll be seeing that creek crossing again 7/24.