History
The Wilderness 101 was first held in 1991. The same organization held the race again in 1992 and 1993 and then unfortunately stopped holding the race. In 2001 an unrelated company specializing in organizing bike tours and races, Shenandoah Mountain Touring from Harrisburg, VA, re-established the race. This organization has now held the race eleven times from 2001-2011. This organization plans to hold the event for the foreseeable future as the popularity of the event continues to increase.
The 1991–1993 race courses were primarily fire-roads and roads. One year even included a short section along the margin of a highway. The 2001 and later race courses contain substantially more trails and degraded fire-roads. Each year the organizer tries to add more trails (single-track and double-track) as new trails are opened or their condition improved. Even when new trails are not included, the course often has to be changed to avoid areas closed by forestry operations, changing trail conditions or due to requests of the managing agencies.
The inaugural winner of the 1991 race was Harry Winard with a time of 6:59. He was a Penn State student at the time and according to an interview in the Oct 1991 Dirt Rag, only decided to race the event the week before. Harry won the race on a Bridgestone MB-0 mountain bike with very narrow and smooth tires (1.5" Avocet Cross) and a set triathlon aero bars. The modern courses with more trails and rougher trails would reduce the chance of someone winning on such a bicycle. These changes also prohibit comparing the finishing times from the earlier events to the current events.
Little is known about the 1992 race beyond the name of the winner, Allistair Neil. As with the 1991 and 1993 event, it is unknown if any women started or finished the 1992 race. John Stamstad, a famous pioneer in endurance and ultra-endurance mountain bike events, won the 1993 race. In these early editions of the race, each finisher was given a t-shirt after finishing that listed their placing and finish time in felt iron-on letters and numbers.
Jay Duff won the first of the re-established event in 2001. His finishing time of 7:07 cannot be compared to the times of the 2002 and later events as a significantly larger amount of new challenging single-track sections were added. In 2011 new record finishing times were set for both men and women. Four time winner Jeff Schalk finished in 6:26 and Vicki Barclay finished in 7:42.
Read more about this topic: Wilderness 101 Mountain Bicycle Race
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