It’s no secret that I love everything that is East Coast mountain biking: the rocks, roots, and jank. The 5-day Transylvania Epic (TSE) stage race serves this up in spades. I raced this event coming off of a knee injury back in 2023, and had a blast. Even though I was taking grad school classes in the evenings, I made sure to take time to enjoy the #singletracksummercamp vibes. Over the past several years, I’ve had the privilege of doing a number of stage races, and love the community-centric atmosphere that racing with the same people for 5-7 days in a row allows.

I came into this year’s TSE with high hopes for my performance. After the huge endurance volume block provided by Rockstar, Wormhole, and Middle Mountain Momma, I felt like I had finally rebounded, and possibly even found some speed / snap again. Beyond just the fitness, I knew that my bike handling was dialed, and hoped that I could put everything together for a podium GC finish.

Stage 1: Catastrophe

About a third of the way through Stage 1, I was sitting comfortably in second and feeling really good about how my legs had showed up…and then I flatted. When I spun my tire to try and plug the hole, a spray of sealant coated me and my bike. The hole was about the size of my pinkie finger, and three side-by-side Dynaplugs weren’t enough to stem the stream of sealant, but I decided to try and get at least some air in the tire. When I pulled out my pump, it, for some reason (perhaps all of the dirt and grit accumulated by hanging out on my bike for the last several season?) didn’t work. In a surprisingly unbothered mood, I decided to take my chances on riding the CushCore the next ~10 miles to the first aid station and started pedaling.

After a little over a mile, a kind rider offered me his tube and CO2, so I pulled the CushCore out and made the swap. That lasted not even a mile, despite my best attempts to ride gingerly. When the tube blew, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to ride at all on a flat tube, so unwrapped the CushCore from around my shoulders and re-installed it on my wheel, then started riding again. After another mile or so, yet another generous soul offered me a tube and CO2, so we once again removed the CushCore. After being ridden flat for several miles, my tire was less keen on seeding against the rim, even with the tube, but after inflating and re-inflating it twice, decided just to ride it–and hope it lasted.

For the rest of the stage, I put my head down and pedaled with everything that I had, while also riding as carefully as possible through any tech / singletrack sections to avoid any chance of blowing a second tube. Somehow, I made it to the finish.

Stage: 6th
Enduro: 🥈
GC: 6th

Stage 2: Let it Rain

Stage 1 would turn out to be the only dry day of the entire week. With rain in the forecast for Stage 2 and 3, I did a double tire swap (moving my front tire to the rear, and putting the new “wet conditions” tire on the front). For those curious, my tire set up for Stages 2-5 was a Maxxis Ikon 2.35 in the front and a Maxxis Rekon Race 2.4 in the rear (and they were great!).

Stage 2 was everything I came to TSE for: East coast roots and rocks served up in all their wet glory. I had a blast slipping and sliding around, managed to keep my tires intact, and once again buried myself pedaling to try and dig myself out of the hole that the flat (lol) put me in during Stage 1. I knew that there was no chance that I would catch Britt, in first place, but I thought that, just maybe, I could catch Erin, in second place.

Erin and I are an odd match-up, as we enjoy (and are good at) exactly the opposite parts of mountain bike racing. She is built for climbing, and excels at it, rocketing past me on climbs, but is in equal measure hesitant on the chunkier singletrack descents, where my size and practice gives me a definite advantage. But, as most bike racers know, races are won on the climbs, and only lost on the downhills.

Still, I managed to snag second place on the stage, which moved me up to 3rd in the GC.

Stage: 🥈
Enduro: 🥈
GC: 🥉

Stage 3: From Rain to Rivers

As the rain continued to come, the race director was forced to start making course changes to avoid damaging trails. For Stage 3, that meant removing the enduro segment and replacing it with a long gravel descent. It was at this point, that I started to wonder if the point of TSE for me was to see how adaptable I could be.

The stage started and finished in a monsoon and even the descents mostly felt like climbing thanks to the soggy conditions. There were several points in the day where I muttered to myself (and anyone close enough to overhear): “When can we please go downhill?” When we did eventually get to the gravel descent, it was slow enough to be an overwhelming disappointment.

But not all was doom and gloom. I found myself really enjoying “Deer Tick,” a rooty, twisting singletrack climb, and the infamous “No Name” descent was still a ripper. (Though I did tell myself to slow down and not risk unnecessary injury while descending the narrow, slick bench cut).

At mile 21 of 34, my trusty Garmin froze, and I spent the next few miles attempting to ride while fussing with it: restarting it, saving my ride (in vain, as once I finished the day, my Garmin wouldn’t ever turn back on), and starting my watch to take over recording. I only had a vague sense of where I was on course until the base of the legendary Stillhouse climb. At that point, I decided to empty the tank one final time in a (vain) effort to catch Erin. In the end, I was just seconds short, finishing third on the day and failing to make up any time at all in the GC.

Stage: 🥉
Enduro: no enduro today due to rain
GC: 🥉

Stage 4: Chasing Perfection

Even as the rain began to let up, the ground was still wet enough that Stage 4 included another rain re-route, skipping portions of singletrack in favor of the drier gravel. Because my only advantage over Erin was on singletrack, this felt like yet another challenge to overcome. Going into the stage, I knew that I had something like ~25 minutes yet to make up if I wanted a chance of catching Erin, which meant that Stage 4 needed to be a perfect day.

It was anything but.

I felt like a pinball, ricocheting bars and pedals off of everything imaginable and even crashed on both of the descents. With each mistake, the space between expectations and reality grew deeper, and my mental space for the last half of the stage was a pretty dark hole of disappointment and battling within myself to let go of that dream of getting to second in the GC.

I finished, having lost even more time in the GC, and completely frustrated at my inability to piece things together, and disheartened that despite showing up with the fitness and skills to do well this week, a bit of bad luck on stage 1 put that out of reach—no matter how deep I buried myself. Racing can be cruel sometimes, and stage 4 left me wondering why I even race bikes–a feeling that took me until the next morning to try and shake off.

Stage: 🥉
Enduro: 🥈
GC: 🥉

Stage 5: Let Go

After the disappointment of stage 4, I decided to let go of my own expectations of performance for stage 5 and just focus on having fun riding my bike. And I did!

I passed 3 people on an inside line rock roll on the first steep descent and that might have made my entire week. lol. The short, punchy climbs and steep singletrack descents really played well to my strengths as a rider, and it was even almost sunny for most of the stage!

As seems to be a pattern for me in stage races, I felt as good or better on the last day as I did on the first day, so I “ran” with it, pushed my legs as much as I could, and snagged a second second place stage finish of the week, which, though it didn’t affect my third place position in the GC, still felt good.

Stage: 🥈
Enduro: 🥈
GC: 🥉

All in all, I’m proud of how I showed up this week and fought hard, despite the stage 1 flats and numerous rain re-routes around the singletrack descents I so desperately needed to have a chance of making back lost time. The concept of letting go of expectations and focusing instead on just having fun riding my bike seems to be a recurring theme this season–maybe eventually I’ll learn my lesson!