Doug's story: Roots, Rocks, and Ridges

BaseCamp athlete Doug Rusho shared his experience at the 2025 Roots, Rocks, and Ridges bike race in New York.

A 30-mile, single-lap MTB marathon that pretty much has it all. I have been racing this most years since 1997 (back when it was a normal two-hour XC race). My goals were in order: 1) have fun, 2) ride the tech with minimal dabs/crashes, 3) pace evenly, and 4) compete well.

A ridiculous beautiful day: mid 70s, very dry, and sunny. Meager turnout, as all racing in our area has been recently, bummer. I swore up and down, no matter what, I would not throttle myself on the opening 15-minute singletrack climb; so much energy needed for this 3+ hour loop. As you will see at the start, I let the front 5 go and rode "easy." Unfortunately on this climb, it is quite steep and still very hard.

I picked off one overeager rider pretty early, and then just ahead I heard a sonic BOOM! Ooff, sounds like a tire blowing off a rim. 15 seconds later, I passed by a racer looking at his bike in dismay. The tire was twisted in a figure 8 coated in Stans. But upon closer inspection, his front carbon rimmed wheel was severed, perfect taco shell halves, ouch. At least he had a short walk back. Now up to fourth place.

At the top into some flat singletrack, man, there are a lot of leaves. On to the most tech challenging trail, Black: a flat rock garden trail that gets progressively more challenging and peaks with multiple sections in the middle and then regresses with shorter smaller rocky sections to the end. I have never successfully ridden this and with the excessive leaves had little hope. We made our best attempt, one endo, 2 dabs requiring hike a bike, not bad.

Passed the 3rd rider walking in one of the tougher sections, and that would be the last rider I see for the next 2 hours and 45 minutes. As Black started to wind down, a new challenge arose: you could not see the trail. I don't think the leaves have been cleared in years, and apparently very few people are riding them to tamp down a path. I started missing corners and heading into the sticks. The further away we got from the start, the worse this became.

Eventually came to the 2nd most tech trail, Bent Rim. This is another rock garden trail that feels like you have somehow time traveled to the prehistoric era: mossy rocks, vines, rock walls, and mini canyons. You feel like a velociraptor is going to pop out from behind a ledge at any moment. Rode this one pretty well: another endo and a few minor dabs.

Then the Four Rocks trail. This was as far away from the start as possible. I don't think anyone, except the two riders in front of me of me, have ridden this in years. Inches of leaves, blind as a bat. Got totally lost and disoriented a few times. My eyes are bugging out of my head as I am scanning everywhere looking for some semblance of a path. Eventually made it out, and then my camera died.

The rest was basically a grind, lots of roots, and climbing, not too much more tech. The bummer again was the vision. The remaining trails were better, but you simply could not enjoy the faster flow stuff. flat or downhill, because you just could not see far enough ahead. You had to tiptoe anything above 10 mph. Not cool, not fun.

At one crossing a volunteer gave the gaps, 6 minutes and 2 minutes to the two riders ahead. I put in a subtle dig for about 20 minutes, but at 2.5 hours the engine was done, pacing goal fail. Time to shift into death march mode and survive. Hamstring cramps ensued but were managed and short lived. Crawled my way back to the top of the ski slopes looking forward to the relatively new downhill park lift assisted flow trails to the finish.

Well, this park has been quite popular, and apparently no maintenance has been done. Leading into every 5 foot berm were huge brake bumps turned into sharp edged craters, killing all of your speed. On top of that, my right triceps had blown up for most of the ride (another puzzle to solve), so I had to cautiously descend. I just want to feel some speed damn it!

In the end, I competed well for 3rd overall, rode the tech well enough, especially with no practice and no recon. Chatting with other racers who ride there all the time, yeah, they all got lost too, so that was neutralized.

I was absolutely smashed physically and mostly mentally from scanning leaves for 3 hours and 20 minutes. This will sound sick and twisted, but I felt much better when the 30-year-old who finished 2nd got up from his chair like he was 90 (as did I) and then threw up a minute later (I did not).

Like everything, with the passage of time, things don't seem so bad. Clearly all of us faced a huge challenge with this race, and it now does seem "fun." The video edit features the two hardest tech trails and the 4 Rocks trail, the pinnacle of flying blind. At the end are my dabs and crashes and getting temporarily lost. Normally video does not do a course justice, but watching this back, it mostly does. I am feeling better already. Excuse the language and spitting!