From out Ouchita Challenege Trip... on the eve of our return

Sitting across from me in the Skyline Café, my boyfriend, Mike Reyher has launched into this, his fourth recounting of the Ouachita Challenge.
It is Sunday morning, late. In fact, I’m eating lunch.
Mike isn’t looking at me. He’s staring into his memories. Gaze fixed 18 inches from his face, he recounts a particular downhill and a talented female rider who was making mistakes.
“ I saw dozens of people who were having electrolyte problems and didn’t realize it,” he says. “They just thought they were tired.”
The Ouachita Challenge is 100K of mt. biking on single track, gravel and country roads between Hot Springs and Mena, Arkansas. It’s put on by the Ouachita Bike Club and it’s grown in popularity so quickly, registrations for both the sold out Saturday tour and Sunday race were being auctioned on Ebay months ago.
400-plus riders from all over the Southwest arrived the Friday before to check in at the Cafetorium of Oden Elementary School. Race organizers hand out numbers hand written on colored index cards, slid into ziplocks, hole-punched and secured with zip ties. In the school kitchen, the Race Director’s parents spread margarine on bread, unload gallons of spaghetti sauce and mix pancake batter by the pound..
For $45, you get a hot breakfast and coffee, two food and water stops, a t-shirt, spaghetti and soda, and the right to say you left a little bit of yourself in the Ouachita National Forest.
Mike is a convert to electrolytes. Ever since his first Arkansas Mt. Bike experience, when he chased Rob Brown out of the parking lot at the Womble trailhead and came back three hours later, no longer able to grip the breaks properly, breaths coming only intermittently as the signals weren’t getting from brain stem to diaphragm.
Less than a year later, he finished his first Ouachita Challenge, that year riding in with Sarah Brown, Catherine Black and a very sore Mark Dick.
Our group has changed over the past three years, but not significantly. And there are enough of us that we fill up one entire end of the Ouachita River Haven peninsula.
This year, Mango and Andy came from Atlanta along with Josh and Justine. Clifford rode out with his wife, Lisa. Shannon Lekas, Big Gulp and Limpy followed in the TM2K. Epic Idiot joined us from Colorado. And we filled out the Dallas contingent along with Beth and Bubble.
Sarah was racing the Ozark Adventure Race. Mark stayed home and Catherine has moved to California.
Me? I haven’t ridden a dozen times since the ankle surgery and am currently rehabbing via some very expensive treatments… so no excessive mileage for me.
This year, the organizers ran the course backwards for the tour. That meant the hardest part – the part even the experts were reduced to walking – came at the end. This, because last year too many people got cut off for time after spending all morning cursing Big Brushy and Blow Out Mountain.
Our group did fairly well, with Clifford leading the whole day. He with his homegrown converted to single speed and his safety flag snapping back and forth, was doing the electrolyte power in his drink and eating as many cookies as the hapless aid-station teenagers could supply.
At the first aid station, Big Gulp came in next, followed by Shannon, Mango, Josh, Beth and then Mike.
Beth stopped long enough for Vaseline, which she swears kept her form dropping out of the race…. But it was not enough. Even though she was the first woman to come through the final checkpoint at Big Brushy, she did not end up finishing. Just one mile farther on, her freewheel gave out completely and she scooted her bike back down the hill to catch a ride back to the end.
I waited for Lisa to pass and finding she needed nothing, left to find my own stretch of the Womble to enjoy.
The dogs and I took off at 11:30 heading north. The Womble is hard on their feet, with a lot more sharp rocks than they are used to at Grapevine. About 3 miles in, I rode out of a creek bed and slipped wet tires on loose shale, going down on my left knee and effectively deciding that six miles was all I’d get that day.
After loading doggies back in the van and finding a coke at Mt. Ida, I drove to Big Brushy for my next and final chance to see our crew.
Again, Clifford came through fine.
Mike was 40 minutes later, with salt crusted in hair, beard, helmet, camelback and jersey. He drank a Monster energy drink and took off after Beth. ON her way back down the hill, Mike encouraged her to take the rear wheel off my Orbea, but I had already returned to Oden Elementary to drink beer and sit in the finish-line sun.
Slowly, the riders came across the line. Some, from the left, having cut the course short. Others slowly trickling in from the right. They claimed their yellow wristbands and collapsed on the grass, beginning to tell tales of the trail. Remembering where they cramped up from lack of salt and potassium, remembering where Limpy lost his brakes and hit a tree, knocking it over onto another rider. Justine rode her Gary Fischer and kept looking for Gary himself, but he was doing the race instead of the tour. Bracken, who got into the tour last-minute on my reservation, pulled a static sideways hop in one of the rock gardens that had Mike asking him to do Trials demonstrations at the finish line. Pretty much everyone needed a good dose or two of electrolytes.
Mike’s friend, Wooglin, who finished third overall on his VooDoo 29er single speed with a rigid fork, hung around with us for a while before we collected Lisa, our last rider, and went about getting on the outside of dinner.
Mike and I headed back to the campsite while the others ate spaghetti.
I layered asparagus, eggplant, tomato sauce, Italian sausage, ground beef, spelt pasta and parmesan cheese in a Dutch oven, covered it with Charcoal and went to take a shower.
When the coals where white and dinner cooked, the whole crew had finished showering. Then, they discussed the ride in earnest, pain having drained from their stories. Showers and pasta revive the soul, and exhausted muscles are forgotten as smoke and laughter filled the night. Except for marshmallows, everyone seemed to have everything they needed. Beers drained and bodies slumped. Soon, everyone was off to bed.
In the morning, Beth was first to rise. Then, Big Gulp joined her. They sat on the edge of the river and watched the sun rise over the trees.
I snuggled in bed a little bit longer, then made a pot of coffee and stoked the fire.
Soon enough, we were all back. All sitting around the fire remembering the ride again. Joking back and forth about riding earthquake ridge. Discussing weekends to come and plans for next year’s challenge.
Somehow, the subject changes to the Assault on Mount Mitchell and Mike is laughing.
“Yesterday, I thought that this was much harder this year than Mt. Mitchell,” he says chuckling, “But then I guess single speed does make a difference.”
The waitress at the café is taking our order and notices Mike’s yellow wristband.
“Congratulations,” she says, “I see your band and I know that means you finished.”
“Thanks,” he says making eye contact for a second.
Then he turns back to his hands and stares into the recent past.
“There was this one guy…”