This past weekend, while competing in the second-annual MDH 100 Race, GearJunkie/YogaSlackers team racer Chelsey Magness set a record on North Dakota’s renowned Maah Daah Hey Trail.
Her time was 14 hours and 30 minutes for the 105-mile route. She won her division in the race (and got 11th place overall), and it is believed she is the first woman to have biked the trail straight through in less than a day.
A remote path that snakes through North Dakota’s Badlands Wilderness, the Maah Daah Hey has been featured on this site many times, from unsupported treks to video shoots. Most of the GJ team has spent some time suffering on this wild and rugged trail, one of the longest continuous singletrack routes in the U.S.
Last Saturday at 5a.m., nearly 150 mountain bikers gathered at the trail’s north end for the start of the MDH 100 race. The course involved riding the length of the Maah Daah Hey to Medora, N.D.
Trail stats read like something out of a manual for pain, including scant water, common 100-degree heat, 13,000 feet of elevation change, and the aforementioned 105 miles of rutted trail.
On average, only 25 percent of the riders in the MDH 100 Race make it to the finish line.
Chelsey writes in detail about her race experience on the YogaSlackers blog. See page 2 of this report for a breakdown on the gear that helped her make it (fast) to the end.
—Stephen Regenold
