The first round of the Big Mountain Enduro Series took place in Mt. Nebo, Arkansas this weekend. It was a rainy week which made for some wild racing. I opted to ride my KHS 6600 paired with Kenda Pinners and Sr Suntour 36 durolux fork and triair2 shock. Day 1 was 4 stages with a combination of raw cut trails as well as pretty pedaly flow trails.
I had a decent stage 1, finishing 2nd but after the rain started coming down again on the transfer from stage 2 to 3 things got interesting and I unfortunately made a few mistakes on the rest of the stages. After day 1 I was sitting 4th but knew I could make up time on the last 3 stages on Sunday as they were more of the fun raw cut that I like. However, Mother Nature had other plans which cancelled the race day due to lightning and heavy rain and only times from day 1 were taken for the overall. I was bummed to not get a chance to pull back time on the rest of the stages but understand safety is a priority and BME had to make the tough call to not finish the day.
In the end I was on the podium with 4th in Pro Women, and a lot of good things to take away to future races. I am looking forward to heading to Windrock, Tennessee to race the next round of the Big Mountain Enduro Series next weekend, hopefully the rain stays away enough for us to finish a whole weekend! Big thank you to those who support the team and keep us running through tough weekends like these.
-Bella Naughton
Mt Nebo was my First time racing the E-MTB enduro category. Practice went well, riding the stages with the e-bike was a lot nicer than practicing in the past with acoustic bikes. Stages varied from flow trails to rough cut slippery steeps. We got some rain and sun during practice days that made the stages very slick and difficult to ride. But was good to ride the different stages in varying conditions before the race. Day 1 of racing went well, weather was great and we spent a lot of time studying go pros before the day started. Saturday morning we learned we will have uphill “power stages” each day or racing in the middle of a transfer. I got 2nd place every stage on day 1 and had decent runs. I ended up getting 3rd on the “power stage”. I finished day one of racing in 2nd place.
Day 2 racing started early with poor visibility due to fog and an incoming storm. I started the day with a 3rd place stage finish. We had heavy rains over night so I rode cautiously expecting everything to be slick. I Finished 2nd on the last two stages and the uphill “power stage”. I was happy to finish the first race of the year in second place. I am excited to head out to windrock and hopefully race in better conditions!
-Lucas Cowan
Happy to get the race season going over here on the east coast. BME always puts on a great race with technical tracks. Had a busy week getting the 7 stages of practice figured out Thursday and Friday. On and off rain made for some slippery conditions this week. The weekend held some great racing with 4 stages on Saturday. I was able to come away leading after Day 1 of racing 10 seconds up on the field. Sunday started smooth but rain rolling in made the tracks roll slow. Ended up flatting on stage 6 ending my time in the lead. That was all the weekend wrote and I placed 4th just missing the podium after that mechanical. Onto Windrock, rain in the forecast should make for some good racing.
-Jackson Winklund
