This story first appeared in the Outdoors newsletter. Click here to learn more and sign up.
Bob Arnold has been watching the sky with worry. St. Louis saw the wettest April on record, and the Greensfelder Challenge mountain bike race, which Arnold is running for the 21st year, is set for Saturday, May 10.
Discover your next outdoor adventure
Subscribe to the St. Louis Outdoors newsletter to get smarter about hiking, biking, paddling, climbing, and camping within the St. Louis region and beyond.
“If we’re going to destroy a trail, we’ll cancel,” he says. “Especially since it’s a charity event for GORC.”
The race is the biggest fundraiser of the year for Gateway Off-Road Cyclists, or GORC—the nonprofit that, more than any other entity, makes it possible to mountain bike on public land in the St. Louis area. Powered by volunteer labor, they’ve built more than 110 miles of trail here and helped maintain more than 150 miles in eastern Missouri, according to GORC board member Bryan Adams. All proceeds from the Greensfelder Challenge go to GORC, says Arnold, who exhorts his racers to become members for $20 a year or at least show up to a work day or two. “You will seriously start to appreciate the trails we have,” he says. “I’ve worked for six hours on one berm and I couldn’t move for a month. Imagine building miles of trail in one day.”
As for the race itself—an event held under the umbrella of the United Federation of Dirt—Arnold hopes to see 200 riders show up at Greensfelder Park, a favorite in the MTB scene. “It offers everything,” he says. “Very fast singletrack. It’s got rocky, rooty obstacles. It’s definitely up there in the top two or three toughest trails in the area.” The Cat 3 race lasts an hour; Cat 2, 90 minutes; Cat 1 is about two hours; and the marathon is three hours. (There’s also a free short race for kids under 10.)
Arnold says the median racer is 35–40 years old. Thanks to the local emergence of National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA), which gets kids involved in mountain biking, the average age is dropping. “We’ve got 18- and 19-year-olds that are keeping up with or beating the heck out of us, which is good for the sport,” says Arnold. As with any endurance sport, though, experience goes a long way, he adds.
Because the race is a boon to GORC—the money helps cover their insurance, tools, and work-day lunches, Adams says—the nonprofit does help with the event. They put up arrows for competitors and notices for other park users; they also check that trouble spots have drained. More than most, GORC is sensitive to the damage that can be done to trails in soggy conditions. But they’re not jerks about it, in Arnold’s view.
“What I love and appreciate about GORC in general is that they don’t preach,” he says. “If someone is doing something stupid on trails, they don’t yell at people. They do it by education.” Such is the group’s intention, Adams says: “We don’t involve ourselves in being the trail police.”
More info on the Greensfelder challenge here; more info on GORC here.
