Chequamegon

Another reason to love the month of September…Chequamegon! The north woods of Wisconsin are pretty amazing at this time of the year, with the fall colors just beginning to make an appearance and all of the pines, northern Wisconsin rivals Colorado in scenery.
Julie and I arrived at the cabin, and shortly after our arrival, Brian Benson busted out the potato cannon as promised and he did not disappoint. I almost felt like I was watching an episode of Beavis and Butthead while Brian and Jim Logan were experimenting with different ways of increasing the distance, velocity, visibility by fire and target practice on John and Kristin while they were on the lake in a canoe.
On Thursday, Julie, my Mom and I went out for an hour long ride over the first part of the course, and it was the wettest that I had ever seen. There was a lot of standing water on the trail that threaded it’s way along the Birkie. As we hit the first little power climb going into Rosie’s, I heard my Mom grinding away at her gears behind us. She quickly realized how deceptive Rosie’s Field can be, with its’ sometimes steep, rolling hills and freshly cut, but still deep grass. We did enough of the course to give her a good idea on what to expect over the course of the race.
Friday, same deal but we did 90 minutes instead and the course was considerably dryer than yesterday, but there were still quite a few large puddles, I knew that the puddles were going to be a lot worse on the middle parts of the course. After the ride, the garage at our cabin looked like the pit area of a World Cup cross race, with everybody doing some last minute clean up and tune ups on all of the bikes. Cool… Bike maintenance was followed by more shenanigans with the potato cannon and mass consumption of lasagna.
Race day. We woke up to mostly blue sky and cool temps in the upper 30’s. After a breakfast of pancakes and eggs, I suited up and rolled out for my warm up. As I hit the road, Jack Hinkens rolled up behind me. We had a nice conversation during our warm up about how his first season on the U23 World Cup mountain bike racing circuit was going. If things continue for him as they are, this guy could easily become one of the top mtb racers in the country, if not the world. Once he gets more base mileage in his legs, he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with.
About 10 minutes before the start, I rolled into the start area and backed myself into a front row position and all of the big dogs from the Midwest racing scene were there, Schouten (whom most picked as the race favorite), Matter (last years winner), Swanson, Anderson, Simonson, Mikey, Peariso, Braun, Marko, Tilford, the Eppenators, among a great many others. Also making an appearance was Utah native Jason Sager.
The cannon went off and I attached myself to Tilfords wheel on the rollout out of Hayward. I stayed on Tilfords wheel for most of the rollout and once we hit Rosie’s, I hit the throttle going up the first short power climb. Within a few pedal strokes, the chain made the dreaded clanking noise as it struggled to engage the teeth on my big ring. The next thing I knew, I was pedaling freely with no power transfer to the chain. I looked down and the chain had dropped to the outside. I dropped the front der to the granny gear and gently pedaled the chain back into position as what seemed like hundreds of racers went whizzing by me like I was standing still. Once the chain was back in place, I opened it up again in attempt to get myself into a decent position as we rolled onto the Birkie. In looking at some of the pictures, what seemed like hundreds of racers ended up only being around 60 – 70-ish.
As we rolled along the Birkie, I managed to pick my way up to what had become the 1st chase group, with the lead group only about 30 seconds up the trail. As we rolled through OO, our group had whittled itself down to seven, including myself, Simonson, Maxwell Anderson, Nate Whitman, Sova, SKJ and Tim Mulrooney. The lead group of 12 was about 60 seconds ahead of us and with Matter launching several attacks on the lead group, there was no chance of us catching them.


The Simonson pain train, followed by yours truly, SKJ, Nate, Sova and Max.




#78 – Mountain Biker… #19 – Roadie maybe?




Padawan Gammell at OO, puttin’ the hurt on all who follow.




Benson carries a smaller version of the potato cannon in his Camelback.




Julie was once again restricted to self preservation mode by her Mom. I think she’d look pretty hot if she had a couple of battle scars from Chequamegon that were visible when wearing her wedding dress.



Shortly after OO, the large man eating puddles began to appear. Some had narrow routes around them, while others gave you no option other than to plow through middle of them. In years past, things never really started to break apart until we hit the Fire Tower climb, however this year the puddles that preceded Fire Tower were the catalyst that began the disintegration. I never had any real issues with the puddles, my drive train made an awful grinding sound whenever I went through some of the puddles, other than that, it worked about as well as one could expect.


Padawan Gammel nearing the top of Fire Tower Hill, makes it look easy. He must have a really good coach…




The Rock, rode to a 1st place finish in the single eye division. The Eppens wanted to insure their dominance in the Iowa category, so they stole one of his contacts before the race.




Big John won the non-mutant division within his age group. Tilford is a mutant and therefore does not count.



As we hit the base of Fire Tower, our group was pretty well strung out with the exception of about five or six of us that were consistently near the front. Simonson took off like a scalded dog, Darrin Braun joined our group out of nowhere and made an attempt to stay with Simonson. Maxwell and I were a little further back, followed by Adam Swank, who had also clawed his way into our group after a not so good start. As we hit the top of Fire Tower, I went by Maxwell and put it into pursuit mode. I closed the gap to Darrin and we worked pretty well together to pull back Simonson after a couple of miles. Maxwell, Adam and Nate eventually closed the gap to us as we hit the final miles of the race.
As we rolled along the final sections of the Birkie, we had caught and passed a few that had blown themselves up with the lead group, Marko, Ryan Krayer (I think we passed him a little earlier, not 100% sure) and maybe one or two others. As we hit the final rollers, Simonson again took off and never looked back. Darrin tried to stay with him, but couldn’t hold his pace. I tried to stay with Darrin and couldn’t match his pace either. I took a quick look back and noticed that I had gapped everybody else off. So I put my head down and steadied my effort to try and reel Darrin back in before we hit the finish. As we hit the top of the last climb and I worked my way back up to Darrin and passed him as we started down the descent to the finish. I lead all of the way down and as we hit the last little power climb he went around me. I tried with everything that I had to keep him behind me, but it wasn’t there.


B Matter = dominance in the 40.




Jake Richards = dominance in the Short and Fat.




PRC chica Maria Von Ruhtenberg, the kid in the background appears to think that biker chicks are hot. I tend to agree with him….especially mine.




My biker chick.




The look of pain says it all, Darin blew by me like I was standing still at the finish.




The Eppenators = dominance on a tandem despite their ever present mechanical issues. Are they going to ditch the tandem for single bikes next year?




My Mom had a great race…rumor has it that she bested Pigs best time.




My lovely wife put in another solid effort that should gain her another preferred start for next year.




Benson told all of us that if we didn’t turn ourselves inside out at the finish, he’d launch a potato at our quads from point blank range. Tom thought he was serious.



I ended up 12th overall and 1st in my age group, just shy of my goal for a top ten. I’m pretty happy with that, considering that I was a little behind where I would have like to have been all season. I missed out on the lead break due to the dropped chain, however I’m not really sure that my result would have been much different had I made it into the lead group. It was a great day for a lot of folks from DSM, John Newell took 2nd in his age group, Sally Logan took 2nd in her age group, Jeff Barnes (Iowa City) was 4th in age, the Eppenators won the tandem division and Julie was 13th in her age despite being in self preservation mode due to our upcoming wedding. The old man of the woods, and I mean this in the most complementary of ways, John Adamson finished an incredible 23rd overall in the short and fat at the young age of 64?! And last but not least, my mom placed 3rd in her age group in the 40. Why did I not refer to my mom as ‘the old woman of the woods’ you ask? Well, she brought me into this world, and even though she is 63, she could just as easily take me out of it. ‘Nuff said.

Next up…I never thought that this day would come, Julie and I are heading out to Colorado to tie the knot. I never thought that I would be this excited to get hitched, but I am. I can’t think of a better person to spend the rest of my life with. I only hope that she can continue to put up with my occasional…maybe sometimes frequent ‘manly tendencies’…

Thanks for reading,

CK

Mapelag SR

Photos from Skinnyski.com


Mmmmmmm, double fudge brownies.....


One of our favorite racing weekends of the year also marks the last days of summer. Even though we hate to see the end of summer, we have been looking forward to this weekend all year. The 8 hour drive up to Maplelag Resort, near Callaway, MN may be a long drive, but it is well worth it. Maplelag Resort is nestled among the trees in the north woods of Minnesota, with great on-site accommodations, awesome food that is served up family style, the company of a lot of fun, like minded people and one of the best, technical mountain bike race courses in the Midwest, it’s pretty easy to understand why Julie and I look forward to this weekend every year. Jay Richards and his family do a top notch job in putting on a great event.

The weekend started off with a short time trial that took racers anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. The TT course was a nice mix of very fast ski trail along with the tight, twisty singletrack that Maplelag is known for. It’s always a challenge to gage the effort at the beginning of a race like this. I’m so used to races that last 2 hours, that pacing for something like this is probably the biggest challenge. I probably charged out of the gate a little too quickly as I had to soft peddle a little near the end of my effort so that I could shove my throbbing heart back down my throat and have somewhat of a strong finish. I finished the TT about 40 seconds behind the stage winner Jason Sager, which was good enough for 8th place on the stage.
Julie’s TT was a slightly different story… Her warm up more or less set the precedent for the way that her weekend was going to go on the bike. She jumped on her bike to warm up and immediately noticed that something didn’t feel right. After a quick look over the rear end of the bike, I noticed that one of the bolts had completely fallen out of one of the pivots. The bolt was no where to be found, and it was an odd enough bolt that nobody had anything like it. As luck would have it, I had brought along my old Mongoose hard tail with plan of using it for the short track race. With a few minor adjustments, Julie was back in business. She was doing OK during her race until she dropped her chain. She lost a lot of time messing around with her chain and ended up finishing about 4 minutes behind women’s winner Sara Kylander-Johnson.

The short track race was held a few hours later, and like the TT, the men’s elite field was stacked with some of the best pro mountain bikers and roadies in the Midwest…yes, we even had a couple of roadies come up and try their luck on the dirt. I got off to a pretty bad start and almost immediately lost contact with the lead group consisting of Doug Swanson, Brendan Moore, Pat Lemiux, Jason Sager and Adam Bergman. Shortly after the start I found myself sitting with the 4th group of riders and managed to claw my way up to the 2nd group of two, Sam Oftedahl and Scott Kylander-Johnson. Near the end of the last lap, I attacked. SKJ went with me and as he passed by Sam, Sam looked at him and said ‘I’m done’. At three corners to go, SKJ cut to the inside and nudged his way passed me. At two corners to go, my chain dropped from my big ring to my middle ring and that was pretty much the end of that battle. By the time I had gotten my chain sorted out, SKJ was long gone. Sam had given up enough that I was able to finish ahead if him and hold on to 7th place. Julie had another disappointing race and had gotten pulled from the race. To her credit, the elite women were thrown in with the Comp men and the pace was a little more than she could handle.


Doug schooled the roadies and mtn bikers in the STXC.


Sunday brought some more near perfect weather and the cross country race. The same players from yesterday were at the start, plus a few others that opted out of doing the full stage race. I got off to a decent start and as we approached the singletrack, the usual bottleneck had formed. I entered the singletrack along side Hollywood and we somehow got locked together while descending a pretty techy section of trail. How we both managed to keep it upright, I’ll never know, but we did and he eventually conceded the position to me. It was a no harm, no foul situation and it’s a part of mountain bike racing that is actually kind of fun, so it was all good.


Jake racing in his backyard, every year he gets faster. It won't be long until you see him at the top of the podium.




Doug knows how to ride on the dirt, maybe some day I'll be fast enough to ride with him and maybe learn a little something.


A short while later, Jake Richards came flying by me near the end of one of the ski trail sections. As we entered the next section of singletrack, I figured that I would try to stay on his wheel and take advantage of his home course knowledge…with ‘try’ being the operative word. I held his wheel for about 0.25 seconds before he was out of sight. At this point, my HR was still through the roof, so I slowed the pace a little so that I could catch my breath and settle into a comfortable pace.
As the race progressed, I did more passing than getting passed and had a lot of fun duking it out with Kevin Ishaug and Josh Tesch. I eventually got dropped by both of them near the middle of lap 2, and a short while later I passed Josh as he was standing on the side of the trail with what looked to be some sort of mechanical issue. I eventually caught back up to Kevin near the end of lap two and passed him as we rolled through the start/finish area.


Workin' my way through the field, I felt better as the race progressed, must be an old age thing.


As I neared the first section of singletrack, I looked back and Kevin was out of sight. So I put my head down and kept the throttle open. As the lap progressed, he was slowly reeling me in on some of the techy sections. When the trail opened up I was able to create a little more distance between us. As I approached the mid point of the last lap, I could see Jake up the trail. He provided a little more motivation for me and I was able to catch to him. As we rolled onto a section of ski trail, I passed him and told him to grab onto my wheel so that we could work together a little. He grabbed on and held on for a short while before I noticed that he was gone.


Threading my way through one of the many sweet techy sections of the course.


I managed to hold off Jake and Kevin for a hard earned 8th place finish. I was OK with the placing, but a little disappointed that I was almost 10 minutes behind the winner, I got over it pretty quickly though. You can't help but smile after racing on a sweet course like Mapelag.


Julie was under a mandatory self preservation race order from her Mom, with our wedding a couple of weeks away!


Julie had another tough race and ended dropping out after the first lap. With our wedding only being a couple of weeks away, she’s had a lot on her mind. This is the type of course where you need to have your head in the game, otherwise it’s going to be a very long, tough race.


Next up is another one of our favorite weekends, Chequamegon. A race that ranks right up there with Mapelag. We're looking forward to some good times with some good friends, beautiful scenery and all of the hoopla that goes along with a mountain bike race that has over 2,500 racers!

Thanks for reading,

CK

Sugarbottom

Brian leading the way at the start, his feet are a blur because he's spinning a 250 rpm cadence on his singlespeed.


After a two weekend break from racing, Julie and I were both looking forward to last weekends race at Sugarbottom. Training has been going well and I felt like my fitness was starting to come around, however you never really know for sure until you through it down on the race course.
Julie and I decided to head over to the course on Saturday for a quick preview of what we might expect for Sunday. The course was typical Sugarbottom, lot’s of big, gnarly, exposed roots. Lot’s of chatter bumps in all of the high speed braking areas. It also had a lot of nice re-routes due to all of the flooding that had occurred throughout the summer. It looked to be a classic Sugarbottom race, arguably one of the toughest races in Iowa.
The usual Iowa suspects were present and accounted for on Sunday with a special guest appearance from a recent Tour De France participant Jason McCartney…I think he was on one of Lance’s tour teams, yes? No? Who knows, doesn’t matter, though I was really anxious to see how he’d do on a tough course like Sugarbottom!
The race started and my plan was to sit back a little and not blow my wad getting to the sharp end of the field. I ended up rolling into the woods about 7th wheel, a little further back than I wanted to be. The front group of about 8 pretty much stayed together throughout the first half lap. McCartney and Ryan Nenninger both flatted early. I kind of figured that something would happen to Jason. At the start of the race, he was asking a lot of questions about how to use certain things on his bike. That almost always leads to some sort of mechanical melt down in a race. It’s too bad because it would have been pretty cool to race against another cyclist of his caliber.


Jason looking for a wheel swap from the Radio Shack team car or the Mavic neutral support car.


As lap one progressed, some of the guys ahead of me started to yoyo off of the guy in front. As we hit the first section of road, I passed the guy in front of me and made contact with the tail end of the lead four of Eppen, Aaron R, Keven M and Shim. We rolled through the beginner loop and as we hit the next section of road, Eppen took over the lead from Aaron. I tried to move up to 2nd or 3rd, but got snaked by Shim as we hit the next section of singletrack. Not really sure why he did that because he looked like he was dying a slow death. We rolled into the singletrack and Eppen began to pull away from the group. Shim was struggling to carry speed throughout the singletrack and almost laid his bike down at one point. I finally asked if he’d let me by and by the time I got by, Eppen was long gone and Aaron was up the tail, but still in sight.
I gradually reeled Aaron in with Kevin on my wheel and we rode behind Aaron until the end of lap one. As we climbed to gravel road at the beginning of lap one, Kevin took over 2nd and I grabbed onto his wheel. As we made our way through the first section of singletrack, Aaron gradually fell off of our pace. I followed Kevin’s wheel throughout the first section of singletrack and the beginner loop. As we rolled along the gravel road after the beginner loop, I passed Kevin to do my share of the work in keeping Aaron behind us. By this time Eppen had a 2+ minutes on us and appeared to have the W locked up, barring any kind of mishap.
I upped the effort a little and noticed that Kevin was starting to dangle on some of the climbs. This encouraged me to push a little harder and I eventually was able to create some separation between us. I began to shift my focus on trying to close the gap to Brian, however by the end of lap two, he was already 2 ½ minutes up on me. I did my best to keep the pace high in hopes of closing in on him a little, and also keep Kevin and whoever else behind me.
Eppen ended up staying away took the W, I held on for 2nd, Kevin came in 3rd and Aaron salvaged 4th. I was pretty happy with the result. It’s a pretty tough course that doesn’t necessarily suit my strengths all that well. I also had to contend with a lot of guys that know the course a lot better than I do, so all in all, it was a very good day!


Big John is tall, his verticality probably grabbed enough wind that it took his momentum away on the way up cyclocross hill.


Despite being out on the course for around 3 ½ hours, Julie had a pretty good day too. She said that it was the best that she’d felt on the mountain bike all year! She also had to contend with a very strong field of women, most of which are from the Iowa City area and know the course a lot better than her.


The Mercy Specialized chicks took off like a pack of scalded dogs and left Julie in the dust.


We saw a lot of peeps decked out in various Rassy kits, it was great to see a good showing of the Rassy squad at an ‘away’ race! Great job to all that finished, regardless of your level, Sugarbottom is a very tough course for everyone.

Next up is the long drive to Mapelag Resort in western Minnesota for the Minnesota series stage race. This has quickly become one of our favorite races of the year. The folks at Mapelag know how to put on a great event and take excellent care of all of the participants with great accommodations, great food and a lot of awesome riding!

Thanks for reading,

CK

Border Battle

Damp and tacky…the best mountain bike racing conditions that one could ask for. That was the condition of the course during Saturday’s recon ride, though rain was forecasted at some point during the overnight hours. I wasn’t too worried about it though as the course in River Falls seems to handle precipitation really well. Julie and I stayed at my Uncles house in the Twin Cities area and sure enough, at some point in the middle of the night, the rumbling of thunder brought us out of a deep slumber.
We showed up at the course to sweltering heat and humidity and almost immediately noticed all of the mud covered bikes from the Citizens race. The Sport racers bikes looked a little better and gave me a little more optimism for our race. I’m not real fond of muddy races, I’ve done plenty of them in the past and find them more of a pain in the arse than anything else. The long drive home with muddy bikes and clothes stowed away in the back of the car makes the car smell like a hog confinement lot by the time we get home.
Once again, WORS ringleader Don Edberg was kind enough to give me a 2nd row call up by virtue of my Pro license. Though I realize that I am far from being a real Pro, having the license definitely has it’s benefits, one of those being call ups at the WORS and Minnesota races where the Elite category routinely has 50 or more starters.
Don said ‘Gooooooooooooo’, and off we went. I got off to a pretty decent start, probably sitting somewhere in the top 20 going up the hill. The first half of the course doesn’t really suit my riding strengths very well, and that happened to be where all of the mud was. There were a couple of small mud bogs in the first open field section, and some of the tight, twisty sections at the beginning were pretty greasy with some snot covered roots to add to the challenge. Another small perk was the first bridge crossing, a narrow bridge spanning a short, man eating gully. The bridge isn’t the real challenge however, it’s the rock placement before the bridge the messes with a lot of people. It’s challenging enough when its dry, however today the rocks had a nice coating of snot on them, which I heard led to a lot of people falling into the deep abyss beneath the bridge. The second half of the course was pretty close to perfect and boasts some of the fastest, flowy singletrack that I’ve ever had the pleasure of rolling my wheels over.
Throughout the race, I got passed by a few and passed a few others. Scott KJ went flying by me somewhere near the beginning of the first lap and left me for the buzzards. When the conditions are technical and muddy, Scott transforms into superman and absolutely flies through all of the tough sections. I wish that I had half of his ability to handle the bike. About midway through the race, I finally began to settle into a good rhythm and had a few really fun battles with Chad Sova, Barry Tingseth, Neil Swanson and a couple of others. Barry led the way through most of the tight, twisty sections. His selection of lines were superb and I had a great time riding behind him and Chad.
On the last lap, we hit the last open section at the top of the hill, I kicked into the big ring and passed Barry and motioned to him to grab onto my wheel in an attempt to do my share of the work. By then we had lost Chad and Neil and we wanted to keep it that way! When I hit the singletrack, I took a quick look back and had lost Barry. So I kept the pressure on to the end of the race and managed to hold him off for….16th overall? I thought that I might have done a little better, however I’m not too surprised as the first half of the course really slowed me down due to the mud. After looking at the final results, I actually feel OK about the result as the field was pretty stacked with a lot of the best racers in the Midwest. So in the end, it was a pretty good day. The mud and heat slowed me down a little, but I still had a great time….I love racing my mountain bike…


My dirty girl makes me purr.

Julie had a pretty rough day, she’s not real crazy about the mud or the heat. She finished her race and rolled up to the car with mud spattered all over her and had that look on her face that asked the question, ‘why in the hell do I do this???’. I know it’s largely because of me, but I also know that she really enjoys it for the most part. I really do have it good…Also, just in case you didn’t know, we’re getting’ hitched in September. Yep, I finally found somebody who’s willing to put up with all of my nonsense…

Thanks for reading,

CK

Seven Oaks

Two weeks in Colorado has come and gone. Got a lot of great rides in and hopefully have things turned around for the remainder of the season… With all of the rain that we had been getting heading into the weekend of the Seven Oaks race, I thought for sure that they were going to have to postpone it. So with that assumption, I headed out for 105 miles of Zone 2 with 45 minutes of race pace intervals in the middle on Saturday on the roads northwest of Ames. Great roads, little to no traffic, and if there is any traffic, every one of them pulled over into the opposite lane and gave me plenty of room. It seems like such a simple thing to do, not sure why some people have difficulty with this courtesy around Des Moines…
So I got back to Julie’s after my ride and gave Mr. race director a call about the status of the race, fully expecting to announce the postponement on the net. The response…’damp and tacky’. I got pretty excited because I love damp and tacky conditions on a race course, until I realized that I had just drained all of my energy stores on my long ride.
So on Sunday morning, as expected, I was feeling very tired and lethargic from the previous days efforts. Definitely didn’t feel the same enthusiasm that I typically do for a race at Seven Oaks. I did a couple of recon laps on the shortened course (due to several washouts from all of the rain) and felt like I had very tired legs.
The race started and, as I had expected, Kevin McConnell took the hole shot. I went pretty hard and could only manage 5th wheel going into the singletrack. As we were approaching the top of the initial climb, Nathan C was off his bike and scrambling to get back in line ahead of me. I put the kabash on that and managed to get by before he re-mounted his steed. Kevin had already began to open a gap and I was fully prepared to let him go. I didn’t really have much of a choice anyway because Ryan Feagan and Mike Sencenbaugh were ahead of me.
I rode with Ryan and Mike for the first lap at a pretty comfortable pace and didn’t really feel like I was pushing myself too hard. As we were completing the first lap, Kevin was only a few seconds ahead of us. My first thought was to get by Ryan and Mike to close the gap. However rather than gas myself in doing so, I decided to let Ryan and Mike do the dirty work. As we hit the singletrack, it was apparent that nobody was going to close the gap. So I settled in for lap 2 behind Ryan and Mike. As we made our way up the climb, Kevin once again increased his gap and gradually did so to the point where he was out of sight. About halfway through the lap, I passed Ryan and Mike and hit the throttle to give my legs a little test at a slightly harder effort. They felt pretty good, so I kept the pressure on in hopes of loosing both of them.
I opened a gap pretty quickly and actually felt like I had more power under the hood than I had originally thought. At the end of lap 2, Kevin had about a 50 second gap on me and thoughts of closing the gap began to enter into my mind. I held the pace over the 3rd lap and felt pretty comfortable throughout the lap. Kevin still had a 50 second gap on me at the end of lap 3 and Mike and Ryan were far enough behind that I could no longer tell where they were. Throughout lap 4, I began to believe that I actually had enough in me that I could close the gap, so I opened the throttle a little more and felt surprisingly good. I was riding well and made very few mistakes throughout the technical course.
At the end of lap 4, I had closed the gap down to 40 seconds which fueled my fire even more. I hit it even harder and in my cross-eyed state thought that this was the last lap. I let it all hang out and could sense that I was rapidly closing the gap. As we approached the end of lap 4, I saw Kevin a short distance up the trail. When I hit the bottom of the hill, Kevin looked like he was well within reach, so I buried myself in hopes of catching him before the finish. He rolled across the finish line about 5 seconds ahead of me, and continued on like he still had another lap to do. I looked at the peeps in the timing tent and they looked at me like I still had another lap to do…crap. I caught up to Kevin and he said that he wasn’t all that jazzed to see me…funny. I asked the obvious question, ‘ do we still have another lap to do?’, he said unfortunately yes.
As we were climbing the hill at the beginning of lap 6, I was dying a slow death from my efforts and Kevin was once again pulling away. He quickly opened up a gap again, to the point where I couldn’t see him anymore. I held my pace until I felt like I was getting my wind back. As I approached the top of the climb, I prepared myself for another 10 minute effort in the red zone, intent on bringing Kevin back. As I approached the end of the lap, I once again saw that I was quickly closing in on Kevin. As we were rolling through the grassy downhill, Kevin overcooked a turn and was rolling through the weeds. I passed him and hit it pretty hard on the remainder of the descent. The last ¼ mile was on an open grassy stretch and I kept the pressure on, thinking that if I hit the last few turns first, the win was as good as mine. To my surprise, Kevin stuck his wheel between me and the inside of a pretty fast corner. It was a pretty ballsy move and he stuck with it and managed to grab the best line as we approached the finish. I gave it all that I had and quickly realized that he had the inside line going into the last corner before the remaining 10’ to the finish. I shut it down realizing that there was no way that I was going to be able to get by him. He ended up getting me by about the width of a wheel. I’m pretty sure that Ron and Troy were not anticipating a sprint finish in a mountain bike race, otherwise they might have re-thought the way that they configured the finish line! Regardless, Kevin rode a smart race and deserved the win, so it all worked out a-ok.
Despite finishing 2nd, I felt like it was probably the best race that I’ve had all year. I felt like I had a lot of power throughout the race, especially when I consider what I had done the day before. Up until this race, I didn’t feel like I had any sustained power. Kevin has had a lot of solid results this year, a couple of top tens in the WORS series to name a few. So I felt really good about finishing with him today.
The next race is going to be a good test for me, the Border Battle in River Falls, WI. The race is a combo race, mixing the WORS and Minnesota series, so most of the big guns in the Midwest will be there.

Thanks for reading,

CK

Mankato

I’ve had some of my best races at Mankato, so I was hoping for a little more of the same this year. Julie and I were about 90 minutes into the drive to Mankato the day before the race, when my phone rang. Jesse had called to tell me that the course was closed for pre-riding due to extensive damage from all of the rain. So we drove to Shakopee, dropped our stuff off at Jesse’s and went out for a spin. Later that night, the heavens opened up and dumped about 1 ½” of rain onto an already saturated race course.
We arrived at the course the next day and saw some of the Cat 3 bikes after their race. Most of them had a nice, thick coating of peanut butter all over them. The Cat 2 race was going on and their bikes didn’t look a whole lot better. It did look like the course conditions were improving a little, so I decided to buck up and do the race.
There were only about 35 starters in the Elite field, and like the last Minnesota race, I got off to a really good start and was rolling about 5th most of the way up the initial climb. About halfway through the first lap, I could feel that feeling coming on like I was going to spend the remainder of the race dying a very slow death. I got passed by 4 or 5 others and it got to the point where I intentionally slowed and waved three of them by me. Most of my dying had occurred when going uphill, I felt pretty good on the flats and could hold pace with just about anybody. I even contemplated dropping out, however despite the climbing issues, I was still enjoying most of the course. There probably 4 or 5 places that were really muddy, bad enough that it pretty much coated the bike with sandy mud. Otherwise, the course was damp, very grippy and a lot of fun. Much to my surprise, I salvaged a 10th overall. I thought for sure that I was going to be a lot further back. Jesse had a pretty stellar day and took the win over Brendan by about 10 seconds. Yeah, Brendan raced the Subaru Cup the day before and Jesse didn’t. Put an asterisk by his name if you want, but a win is a win. He’s riding really well this year and it was only a matter of time before he bagged a win.
So you might be asking why I opted to do this race, rather than the Subaru Cup over in Wisconsin… There are a couple of reasons, first, for a reason that I’m still trying to sort out, my form on the mountain bike is considerably less than it had been over the past couple of years. I don’t really feel like I’m worthy to race as a Pro locally, much less amongst national caliber Pros. Second, I would have ended up starting near the back of the field. I’m racing so poorly this year that I probably would have gotten lapped and pulled within a couple of laps. I really hated missing the Subaru Cup, I really love the course and they do such a phenomenal job with the WORS series. Mankato is a lot closer and we ended up spending a lot less money racing in Mankato.
It’s going to be a few weeks before I race again. I’m doing the Marathon Nationals in Breck this weekend, however I’ve decided to do it as a training ride so that I can focus more on getting my fitness turned around and back to where it should be while we’re out in Colorado. If you’re some jack wagon of a thug thinking about breaking into my house while I’m gone…think again dude. I have a bad ass, football coach neighbor who is home 24/7 that’s going to keep an eye on my pad. If you try something stupid, he will grab you, twist you into a pretzel and then deposit you in his curbside garbage can on trash day, shortly thereafter you will get a nice tour of Des Moines in the back a Metro Waste Authority tour bus.


Thanks for reading,

CK

Ponca

Ponca is a pretty tough course, if you don't believe me, ask Jed.


Ponca…another one of my favorite courses. With all of the rain that the Midwest had been receiving, it was pretty amazing that the race even happened. God was kind enough to provide all of us with near perfect trail conditions as the dirt was damp and very grippy. Lot’s of Iowa peeps made the trip across the river to experience some of the sweet singletrack that the state of Nebraska has to offer, Jed, Maria, Keely, Nate C, Jesse and Katie B to name a few. It was great to finally see a lot of folks from Iowa there. It’d be great to see more Iowa folks head to Nebraska and vice versa.
So the usual Nebraska suspects lined up for the start sans Kent and Steve, I ended up with a pretty lousy start sitting near the back of the pack. As we were approaching the singletrack, I saw MOD roll to the side of the trail with his chain dangling from his drive train. I was really looking forward to dukin’ it out with him, so I was pretty bummed for him. I ended up going into the woods in 8th on Jed’s wheel. It was actually OK with that because we were all in a pretty tight line throughout the beginning of lap 1 (of 5). Jed found some creative ways to get past a couple of dudes that had over-extended themselves at the start. I sat back and patiently waited for chances to pass in the tight, twisty singletrack. Throughout the course of lap 1, I managed to claw my way up to 2nd behind Kevin. I did pretty well in selecting the right places to pass, never pushing myself into the red zone.
As we approached the steep climb leading up to the road crossing, I passed Kevin at a location that would be difficult for anybody else to get by him. I accelerated up the climb with the intent on opening a gap. As I crossed the road at the top of the climb, I could tell that nobody else had gotten around Kevin and that I had established a pretty decent gap. I kept the pressure on throughout lap 2 and took an occasional glance back when the course doubled back on itself and saw nobody….perfect.
I backed it off a tad on laps 3 and 4, keeping one eye on the trail ahead and one eye on the trail behind. As I started lap 5, I turned up the heat again to ensure that nobody (MOD in particular) caught me. MOD has enough bike savvy that he can fix things quicker than the average joe, especially a dropped chain. Nobody ended up catching me, though I think that it would have been a different story if MOD could have kept his chain on his bike. It also would have been a different story if Kent had been there. He instead, opted to spend the weekend down in Arizona chasing forest fires on his bike. Despite dropping his chain three times, MOD managed to salvage a much deserved 2nd and Jesse P continued his good season with 3rd.
Julie had some good competition in the Cat 1 race with Keely Shannon of the PRC Divas making the trip from Des Moines. I was really looking forward to the outcome as they seem to be pretty evenly matched. As I was beginning lap 4, I saw Julie up the trail. I always find myself experiencing the same dichotomy whenever I pass Julie in a race, one hand it would be good not to see her because that would mean that she was having a better than usual race. On the other hand, I love coming up behind her and watching her get her rage on, it makes me smile. Thankfully it wasn’t during a tricky part of the course as it is always a bit of a distraction when passing her during a race….purrrrrrr. Seeing Julie before Keely could only mean one of two things, either Keely is ahead of her, or Keely had dropped out. About a half lap later, I caught and passed Keely. I thought about knocking her into the weeds to kinda help Julie out a little, however the sportsman in me took over and I opted to pass her with kindness. Keely ended up taking down Julie for the win with Julie finishing in 2nd a few minutes back. It’s going to be a lot of fun watching the two of them duke it out over the rest of the season!


Thanks for reading,

CK

Afton

We saw the family truckster on the way up...we knew it was going to be a good weekend after that.



BS'n with Doug and Eric O.



The start of the 70+ strong elite field. Brendan's thinkin', "is that all you guys got for me?"


Afton…one of my favorite race courses. You’re either going up or down at Afton, and when you’re going down, it’s usually fast and can be pretty technical at times, so there’s not much opportunity for recovery. No less than 73 elite men toed the line at the start. I had, by my standards, a great start sitting 4th wheel after the initial climb and ended up 5th wheel going into the woods. It was at about that time that I realized I was going to have an average day. During the first few miles, whenever the trail opened up I got passed by one or two others. This continued for a short while until I finally recovered a little and was able to settle into a somewhat comfortable rhythm. At that point I was riding somewhere at the bottom end of the top ten.
During the 2nd and 3rd laps, I could see Eric Oftedahl and Garrett Kuzzy duking it out behind me on some of the portions of the course that doubled back on itself. I think at this point I was sitting around 8th or 9th maybe. So my goal at the time was to keep both of them behind me. As we progressed through laps 2 and 3, I was beginning to suffer on a couple of the steeper climbs, especially Shady Lane. In the past it had always been pretty easy to middle ring the climb, but for whatever reason, it was a struggle this time around. I persisted with the middle ring, turning a slower than normal cadence. In hindsight, probably not the best thing as pushing a lower cadence tends to sap the strength out of my legs.
During lap 3, I began to succumb to my suffering, Eric and Garrett were closing in on me. Garrett eventually caught up to me and settled in on my wheel. At the time, I had no idea who he was, I had never seen nor heard of him. So I had no knowledge of any potential weaknesses to exploit. As we rode along, Eric looked like he was beginning to fade, and Garrett was showing no signs of tiring. About halfway through lap 3, Garrett went around me and left me for the buzzards. I had no response for him and all that I could do was watch him ride away from me like I was standing still.
For the rest of lap 3, I was pretty much in survival mode. The heat was starting to get to me a little and my legs felt like crap when the trail turned skyward. At the beginning of lap 4, I noticed some heavy clouds starting to roll in and the temperature had dropped about 10° over the course of about 5 minutes. I felt this sudden burst of energy, it felt like all of the fatigue in my legs had been flushed…sweet! I increased the effort with the hope of catching and passing somebody, which I did. Unfortunately it was Sam O, standing on the side of the trail fixing a flat. It’s too bad as he was having a pretty stellar race. I think that he was sitting in a pretty solid 2nd place at the time that he flatted. I felt pretty bad for him, but that’s an unfortunate part of racing sometimes. His flat provided even more motivation for me, I didn’t want to get caught and re-passed by him.


Cresting one of the many climbs on the course with an angry pair of legs.


During the latter part of lap 4, the lapped traffic from the Comp race was getting pretty thick and it was staring to sprinkle a little. I ended up in 7th overall, about 90 seconds behind Garrett and about 40 seconds ahead of Sam O. After realizing the quality of the field, I was pretty content with the result. There were a lot of fast guys, Brendan as always, Doug, Jesse, McBurney had a great race. Tad Elliott, I think he is a U23 national cross and mountain bike champion. I talked to Eric O after the race and he told me that Garrett was on the 2008 Olympic Nordic Ski team. So yeah, there were a lot of big engines in the field.


Julie cresting one of the many climbs on the course…she had very angry legs too. She really did have a good time, she just didn’t know it at the time.


Julie’s race….another story. This was her first big race as a Cat 1 and I can only imagine the intimidation as she lined up with the other elite women, which included national caliber pro Jenna Rinehart. Afton is one of the most difficult race courses in the Midwest. The severity of the climbs and the sometimes technical nature of the trails can be challenging for just about all of us. The Minnesota series implemented a new rule this year, that all lapped riders would be pulled from the race. During the latter part of her race, she got lapped by Jenna and as Jenna passed, Julie told Jenna that she had never been happier about being lapped. Jenna had a big enough lead that she slowed and introduced herself to Julie and chatted it up for a few seconds. It’s things like that and racing mostly in the local scene, that makes Jenna a great ambassador for the women’s side of mountain bike racing in the Midwest. Jenna has the potential to make a career out of mountain bike racing, but instead chooses to keep it local and primarily race the Minnesota series. Good stuff.


Thanks for reading,

CK

Snake Alley

Far and above my favorite race on pavement.


Snake Alley was pretty much a same race different year type of deal. For the 3rd year in a row, I won the 40+ race and finished 2nd in the 30+ race. The start list for both races get tougher and tougher each year. The 40+ race had over 30 competitors and contained several with a proven track record, Paul Deninger, Jeff Barnes, Dan Casper, Babe the Blue Ox (formerly known as Shrek), Jim Cochran and Dale Sedgwick to name a few.
The race started and I was able to quickly find my way to the front group, which had whittled itself down to about 15 racers with 6 laps to go. This seemed like a little more than usual, and for whatever reason, I felt the need to amp it up a little. So I punched it going up the Snake with 6 laps to go and found myself with a pretty good gap at the top. A lapse in judgment encouraged me to keep the pressure on with the idea of going solo to the end.
As I was making my way up the Snake on the last lap, I looked down the switchbacks when I hit the top and noticed Cochran was quickly closing down the gap. One of the keys to making a gap stick on the Snake is to continue the hard effort beyond the top of the Snake when most others are cooked. So as I rolled over the top, I dropped it into the big ring and hammered it down to the first corner. I coasted through the three 90’s and drilled it on the flats. As I approached the finish line, I took a quick look back and just barely held off a quick charging Cochran for my 3rd 40+ win in three years. I made it really hard on myself by attacking so soon, and it almost cost me the race.


The look on my face says it all...it hurts really bad when you try to solo the last six laps of the race.


The 30+ field was probably the most stacked that I had ever seen, with Dewey Dickey as the clear favorite, former Tilfordette Shadd Smith, Ian Stanford, Barnes, Cochran, Casper and professional triathlete TJ Tollakson. I got off to a pretty crappy start and was in last place rolling up the Snake on lap 1. I kept my cool and gradually picked my way through the field and had noticed that a lead group had formed after a couple of laps, and I wasn’t a part of it.
Over the next few laps, I hit it pretty hard up the Snake, coasted on the downhill and maintained a decent tempo on the flats. By lap 6 I had the lead group within my reach and finally completed the bridge going up the Snake. I settled in near the back of the group, with the intent on sitting in for a couple of laps to recover, observe and determine who the contenders were going to be. With four laps to go, Dan Casper took a flyer off the front as we passed the start/finish line. Nobody seemed interested in responding, myself included. It was pretty hot out, and I thought that it was a little too early…a little lesson that I thought that I had learned earlier in the day. There were a lot of cats in the field with a lot of top level experience, enough that I figured the group would eventually bring Casper back.
With two laps to go, Casper had a pretty big lead and nobody seemed at all interested in working to bring him back. So as we hit the Snake, I knocked the rear end down a few cogs and accelerated to the top. I had a pretty good gap at the top and continued the effort down the backside with the intent of trying to reel in Casper and also nail down 2nd place at the very least. I was closing down the gap to Casper over the duration of the last two laps and increasing the gap between myself and the chasers. I came up a little short and had a front row seat to Caspers victory celebration, but managed to hold off the chase group for my 3rd 30+ runner up finish in as many years. As I was congratulating Casper on his much deserved victory, he told me that he took a page out of my book from the 40+ race and thanked me for the lesson. I thought that was a pretty cool compliment.
Julie is steadily improving on the road side of things and finished a very respectable 13th out of a field of over 30 in the Cat 4 race. She’s acquired my unfortunate habit of lousy starts and was pretty much DFL going up the Snake on lap one. She made steady progress throughout and would most likely have finished further up the order if the race would have been longer. She’ll get there…


Thanks for reading,

CK

Banner Pits

Despite riding like a rookie, I still enjoyed the day.

I was really looking forward to racing at Banner again this year. The folks of CITA built a sweet little network of very technical trails that make for some pretty tough racing conditions. And to make things even more difficult, the temperature soared into the upper 80’s!
The race started and my goal was to take the hole shot into the woods, however Ryan Nenninger also appeared to have the same idea. I didn’t have any interest in blowin’ my wad at the start of the race, so I let him have it. At the first point where the course split of for beginners, the race organizers forgot to remove the tape blocking off the Cat 1 course. Confusion ensued, and Ryan slowed to roll through the tape. The wire holding the tape in place looked like it had wrapped itself around his drive train and he had to stop. I went by and took over the lead with Nate on my wheel.
Shortly after I took the lead, I heard the sounds of a bike/tree altercation behind me. It sounded like Nate had gotten bested in his clash with a tree. It was way too early to go solo, but for whatever reason, I took off hoping to create a gap and keep it for the duration. I was able to maintain a small gap on Kevin McConnell over the first two laps, despite having one of those days where I was riding with two left hands. I had a really hard time getting my head into the game…not a good course if you’re lacking focus. I took a lot of bad lines, I felt like my front tire was washing out in a lot of the corners, etc.
On lap three, my haphazard handling got the best of me. As I approached a plank bridge that went over a log, my front tire missed the plank and T-boned the log. I went sailing over the bars, quickly picked myself back up and was able to continue on…until I realized that my shifting at the rear end was all over the place. I tried the barrel adjuster with no success, and shortly after that, my chain wedged itself between the cassette and the spokes. I stopped and it took an eternity to pull the chain out. When I finally got the chain rerouted, I hopped back on the bike and the shifting was still screwed up. Rather than risk screwing my drive train up further, I decided to pull the plug. When I got back to the car, a short examination of the rear end revealed that I had a bent rear der hanger. Definitely game over and a rare DNF for the day. Julie had suffered almost the same fate, no crash, however she had gotten her chain so wadded up behind the cassette, that I had to break the chain and pull the cassette off the get it out. So what did we do to commemorate the day? We drank some beer, of the New Glarus Belgian Red variety, with my brother and his wife, who were in town from Florida that night.


Julie on one of the many bikes that she got to demo after wadding up her chain in the rear end of her bike.


The race wasn’t a total loss however. As I was doing a course recon before the race, the beginners were in the middle of their race. I came up on Wendy Herrick as she was slowly picking her way through the techy trails. We came up on one of the trickier, steep descents and she stopped at the top and looked like she was getting ready to dismount and walk it. I rolled up beside her and offered some instruction on how to negotiate the trail. I jumped on my bike and demonstrated what I had told her and then waited at the bottom for her. She thought about it for a couple of seconds, backed up a little and then took the plunge. As soon as she hit the bottom, she let out a scream of excitement as she rolled to stop. The look on her face was of pure excitement and I could tell that she was a little overwhelmed from the rush of adrenaline that she has just experienced. After being thanked several times, I continued on my course recon. I had a really hard time containing the grin that I had on my face for the remainder of the ride. That experience alone made up for the lack of success during the race. Moments like that are why I love hosting the women’s mountain biking clinic every year. It is so much fun watching others experience various aspects of mountain biking for the first time!


Thanks for reading,

CK

State Fair Crit

Blockin' the wind for Dewie with 3 laps to go


With nothing going on the dirt within a 3 hour radius this weekend, we decided to keep it local and get some Snake Alley practice in at the Iowa State Fairgrounds crit. After doing several recon laps, I can see why people might liken this course to Snake Alley, with one exception, there are no flats on this course, either up or down.
I needed a good training weekend, so Julie and I went our separate ways the day before and did a 4 hour endurance ride. I felt really good throughout the ride and kinda thought that I would have a pretty good couple of races on Sunday. I planned to do the 40+ race, see how it goes, then decide on the P/1/2 race afterwards.
We lined up for the 40+ race to a pretty stacked field for a bunch of old guys, Dewey Dickey, Kung Lou, Paul Deninger and Babe (formerly known as Shrek) to name a few. I got off to my usual crappy start due to my inability to get clipped in before slotting myself into DFL. I quickly caught up to the lead group by the time we hit the top of the climb. A few laps later the lead group had whittled itself down to myself, Dewey, Babe, Paul, Lou…there may have been a few others. There were a few attacks going up the hill, however it was a half-hearted attack by Dewey that shattered the remainder of the group. I managed to stay with him and when we hit the top of the hill, I took a quick look back and saw that we were alone. I took the lead and kept the pressure on going down the hill.




Dewey didn’t appear to have any interest in sharing the workload, so I broke the wind over the next couple of laps, waiting for the inevitable attack from Dewey going up the hill. The attack never occurred and as we hit the top of the hill, I pretty much had myself ready to turn myself inside out to keep Dewey behind me. We hit the bottom of the hill, rounded the 180, and found the perfect gear to accelerate up the small climb to the finish. I never really considered myself to be much of a sprinter, but I managed to outkick Dewey for the win. It was great to finally beat Dewey after having gotten my arse handed to me by him over the last 10 or so years, however I also realize that he was most likely saving himself for the P/1/2 race.
I felt good enough after the race that I decided to sign up for the P/1/2 race. I think that I might have acted a little too quickly in my decision as my brain was still operating off of little to no blood flow from the previous race. This realization came at the bottom of the climb on lap 1 of the P/1/2 race. Randy Reichardt and a few others thought it would be a great idea to amp it up on lap 1. Once again my inability to get my feet situated into the pedals had me rolling up the hill in last place.
By the time that I gotten myself out of the chaos of the rear end, a lead group of six had formed and appeared to be long gone. It was at about lap 3 that everybody in my group appeared to be self destructing as they were dropping like flies when going up the hill. The 2nd group contained myself, Brian West and a few others. I could see the lead group ahead of us and the gap wasn’t growing, so I figured that we still had a small chance of catching up. Once again, I found myself doing the bulk of the work at the front and about midway through the race, the lead group was about ¼ of the way up the hill when we were at the bottom. They appeared to be going at a fairly slow rate, so I put in pretty hard dig and started to close the gap at a pretty rapid rate. As I was closing in, Dewey took a look back and appeared to notice me catching up. He took off up the hill right as I had caught up and that was the end of the battle for the top spot on the podium.
I settled into the back of the chase group, consisting of Randy, Bryan Moritz, Jared Osterloh, Clark Priebe and Chad Bishop. I did little to no work as I had already worked myself over pretty good in bridging the gap from the 2nd group to the lead group. I was actually feeling pretty good as long as the effort didn’t exceed my Zone 3. Whenever the effort forced me into Zone 4, my legs protested the effort by threatening to detach themselves and club me over the head.
Over the last couple of laps, the attacks up the hill began. I didn’t have the legs to keep up, but I was able to bring myself back on the descent. On the final lap, Jared put in a pretty fierce attack up the hill and once again, I was unable to respond with the group. I caught back up to Chad Bishop, but the effort to catch him pretty much drained me of any sprint for the finish. I ended up in 7th and was pretty content with the result at the end of a hard weekend of training.


Julie looks really good on a bike...purrrrrrr.




Takin' the high speed 180 like a mountain biker.


Julie wasn’t quite as fortunate in her race as she was still suffering from the effects of the previous days ride. She’s also still trying to get the road bike racing thing figured out, especially when going downhill on certain courses like the State Fair course. She put in a very respectable effort, finishing 7 out of 11 in a race that combined all of the women into one category. When she finished her race, she told me that her legs were pretty po’d at me. They got over it pretty quickly as we treated ourselves to dinner and beer (for Julie) at the Court Avenue Brewey with Maria Von Ruuuuutenberg, Lisa V, Jeremy and a few others.


Thanks for reading,

CK

Ingawanis

I always look forward to the annual trip to Waverly for the IMBCS race at Camp Ingawanis. Rob Walters and his posse always do a nice job with the course, schwag and post race food. I especially look forward to it when they do the race on the north loop. Lot’s of climbing, a sweet, techy rock garden and a lot of smokin’ fast descents. Today was especially cool because it was Mother’s Day and my Mom made the trip up from the QC to do the race.
After a recon lap, we lined up for the start and I took off with intent of being first into the woods. We hit the singletrack with me leading the way. The lead group eventually whittled down to myself, Kevin McConnell, Scott Gall and I think Brian Fuhrmann might have been there for a short while too. During lap 1 we eventually shook Brian and it was the three of us riding together for the first two laps.
After lap 1, Scott took over going up the gravel climb and we rolled into the woods on lap 3 with Kevin on my wheel. Throughout lap 3, I could tell that Scott was beginning to run out of gas, especially on the climbs. So about midway through lap 3, I went by Scott and put in a slight acceleration with the hope of at least loosing Scott. Kevin also got by Scott and tried to close the gap down to me, but seemed to be struggling.
I kept the pressure on with one eye on the trail and the other on Kevin. It’s a good course for Kevin because he’s a good technical rider. So I focused on putting hammer down on the fast open sections and being smooth through the techy stuff. I managed to hold off Kevin for the my first win of the season. Kevin rode a great race and brought home a much deserved 2nd. Brian Fuhrmann kept it together enough to get by a rapidly fading Scott Gall for 3rd.
Julie had ‘one of those days’. She was pretty pumped because the women’s Cat 1 field had 6 racers…that’s right, I said six! It wasn’t that long ago when we were lucky to have one woman toe the line in the expert / Cat 1 field. Julie and I are both totally stoked at the growth of women participation in mountain bike racing. So back to ‘one of those days’. Julie and I were doing a course recon and I was riding a little ahead of her to show her the ins and outs of the course. We were cruising through the rock garden and I was far enough ahead of her that I couldn’t see her when I looked back. I cleared the garden and shortly thereafter I heard a loud ‘crack’. My ‘female might be in trouble’ radar was in full alert mode, despite there being several other folks riding in front of and behind us. I doubled back and found her standing next to her bike, doubled over. She said that she had t-boned a tree and was taking inventory of any possible bodily damage. Once we determined that all was good, we continued on.
That more or less set the tone for the rest of her day as she hit the deck again during the race. She somehow managed to cross up her front wheel and flatted. She had forgotten to bring Co2 with her and ended up walking. Jim Logan eventually rolled up to her and offered his Co2, however the bead wasn’t set and the tire wouldn’t hold air. Jim, being the great guy that he is, offered Julie his front wheel. He was having a not so good day too, and was pretty insistent that she take it. She tried to decline, however Jim was having none of it. He pretty much took her wheel and put his on her bike and told her to get lost. That’s one of the many reasons that I love this sport. You won’t find a better group of people to hang out with. Oh, and Linda, if you’re reading this, mountain bike racing is still a very safe sport! If and when we crash, we usually land on very soft dirt and weeds and rarely end up with any broken body parts. I wouldn’t let your daughter participate if I thought that she was in any kind of danger. Nor would I allow my Mom to partake in the fun.
Speaking of my Mom, she had her usual ear to ear grin on her face the entire time she was riding. Watch her ride and that pretty says it all as far as how much fun riding a mountain bike can be.

Thanks for reading,

CK

Swanson

Swanson is one of my favorite courses in the Psycowpath series. I like it even more when rain falls a couple of days prior to the event and dampens the course a little, making it tacky and fast. The usual suspects were toeing the line and when the whistle blew, Kent McNeill took off like a scalded dog. Shim managed to wedge himself between Kent and myself during the open field start loop. I came pretty close to blowing my wad in getting by Shim before we hit the woods, and by then Kent had already opened up a gap on us. I closed the gap down, only to have it re-open a few seconds later. And that was all she wrote for the battle for the win.
Within a half a lap, Kent was out of sight and had the rest of us more or less resigned to racing for the 2nd step on the podium. The first couple of laps were spent shadow boxing with Shim and MOD, until Shim clipped his pedal on tree. The tree knock him off his bike, Shim and his bike were sprawled across the trail. Being on Shim’s wheel, I had a quick decision to make. Ride over the top of Shim, or track stand it until he was able to get himself cleared. I opted for the latter because I like him and didn’t want to leave a tread mark up the side of his head. I eventually got around the wreckage and shortly after that MOD went by me.
I stayed on MOD’s wheel for a while, and after that ‘while’ was over I began to dangle until the elastic finally broke. For whatever reason, I just didn’t have it in me over the first half of the race. I found myself being very tentative through some of the more technical sections. It was one of those days I guess. MOD rode off into the sunset and left myself, Shim and Kev to battle for the table scraps.
So for the 3rd time, my plans for the race had to be revised. Throughout lap 3, I began to feel better physically and technically and figured that I would try to shell my companions through the start / finish area at the beginning of lap 4 if I were to have any chance of reeling MOD back in. We rolled through the start / finish area and I punched it. I heard a lot of chaos behind me, I didn’t realize it at the time, but Shim and Kev were both trying to get bottle hand ups. I kept the pressure on and opened a gap as we entered the woods. The gap continued to grow throughout lap 4, however I found myself being more concerned about the gap between MOD and myself.
I had finally found my groove and thought for sure that I was closing in on MOD. I kept the pressure on throughout lap 4 and 5, however MOD was riding really well and I never did see him.
I ended up finishing 3rd with Kent taking the W, and MOD finishing in a well deserved 2nd. Right now, Kent is in a league of his own and MOD is also going to be really tough to beat this year. I’m looking forward to taking another shot at both of them…I love the competition…
I was pretty happy to salvage a 3rd place on the day, considering how things were going over the first half of the race. I was off my game, but somehow managed to pull it together a little more over the last half. That I was able to turn things around like that made me pretty happy. My last two laps were my fastest of the race, to the tune of about 60 seconds, and they were on par with Kent’s lap times. I’m cool with that.
Julie had another great race, posting a win in the Cat 1 race. Yeah, she was the only Cat 1 registered, however they started her with the Cat 2 women. She rode away from the Cat 2 field and posted faster lap times than all of them. She is riding on some pretty good form right now and she’s handling the bike much better than I did when I was a year into mountain bike racing. If you’re a dude, and you get chicked by Julie, don’t feel bad about it ‘cause she’s tearin’ it up right now.


Thanks for reading,

CK

Bone Bender

After having spent all of last week nursing my wounded calf muscle, I wasn’t sure as to whether I’d be doing the race up until the morning of the race. Julie and I went out for am easy ride Saturday afternoon and everything seemed to feel OK. I did a few very short, hard efforts to see how it felt and I didn’t notice any discomfort. However a 30 second effort is a far cry from a 6 hour effort, preceded by a le mans start.
The next morning we drove to the course, Julie and I did a short recon of the first part of the course and everything felt great, so I decided to sign up for the 6 hour with the intent of dropping out if I didn’t like the way my leg felt. We lined up for the start and I took it really easy on the run for fear of blowing my calf out again. I ran slowly enough that I didn’t feel a thing and finally got to my bike and ended up at about mid pack of 200+ racers.
I encountered the usual traffic jams going into the singletrack when stuck in mid pack. I was OK with that though as it forced me to take it easy in the beginning. The traffic was such that I ended up having to dismount a couple of times at a big log crossing and one of the rocky drops, due to others having to dismount. I had a couple of cats behind me that were annoyingly talkative in their efforts to get by me. I had kinda forgotten how people get when they get stuck in traffic, anxiously trying to get by in areas where there is no place to pass. I’m never sure where they think they’re going to go because if they get by me, they’re gonna get stuck behind the guy in front of me.
I finally cleared myself of the traffic jams near the end of lap 1 and was finally able to settle into a good enduro pace. I had no idea what place I was in throughout the race, however I was feeling good enough that I felt the urge to increase the effort to make up ground on the leaders. My better judgment kept my aggression in check and I maintained a comfortable pace as I didn’t want to exert more effort than my bad wheel could handle. Once clear of traffic, the course became a lot more fun to ride with plenty of techy stuff such as logs and bike component/man eating rock gardens.
Here’s a short list of interesting things that I saw throughout the race. I passed Squirrel at some point and noticed that he was riding a fully rigid bike, my lower back hurt a little worse as I passed him. The next time that I passed Squirrel, he was hangin’ loose underneath the Rassy tent with a cold beer in hand. I saw two dudes riding their bikes with on crank arm in place, and the other either in hand, or dangling from the bottom of his shoe. Lebeda and his son doing a father/son duo in the six hour race. I passed his son and started thinking about how cool it would be do something like that with your son. They’re both going to cherish the memories from this event for the rest of their lives. Passing Maria Von Ruhtenberg a few times and noticing a little more blood trickling down her leg with each pass. She’s taking her lumps this year, however she’s progressing nicely and is making a strong case for earning the title as the all time best in mental fortitude. She finished the 6 hour race and I’m very proud of her for sticking it out. Julie had a great race and ended up finishing 2nd overall on the 3 hour race, behind Nebraska mountain biking studette Roxeanne Feagan. When I talked to her after the race, she expressed regret in settling for the 3 hour race because she felt like she still had a lot left in the tank. So to make up for it, she decided to sign up for the Firecracker 50 in Breckenridge, CO. We also talked her brother into signing up. I think that she’s going to chick her brother, despite the Firecracker being held in his ‘back yard’.
I ended up finishing 5th overall, within a few minutes of 2nd through 4th. The guy that won was something like 30 minutes ahead of 2nd place. I’ve never heard of the guy, however I’m guessing that he must know the place like the back of his hand to get that kind of a gap on everybody else. I was pretty content with the result, crap, I was pretty happy that I was able to even ride after what I had gone through last week!
The following weekend, Julie and I made the trek to Iowa City to do some road ragin’. Not much to report other than my discovery that as you get older, you have to pee a lot more often. I must have peed like 6 times prior to the start of the race! Ten minutes into the race, I had to pee again, so much so that I was seeing yellow. It was very distracting and made it difficult to keep my head in the game. Finally, after 4 ½ laps of doing the anti-pee dance on my bike, I finally caved in and stopped to pee on the side of the road. The neutral support vehicle slowed thinking that I had a flat. He slowed long enough to see the golden shower flowing into the ditch, and then hit the gas and took off. I wasn’t able to catch back up to the group, so I decided to bail with a lap to go. I was pretty anxious to hit the road and see my niece on her 3rd birthday anyway!

Two more reports down, three more to go before I get caught up. Three weekends ago I did the Psycowpath race at Swanson, two weeks ago-ish I did the IMBCS race at Camp Ingawanis. Last weekend I did a couple of roadie races at the state fair grounds. Reports coming soon-ish.


Thanks for reading,

CK

Sylvan Island

Unlike last years race through mud and oil slicks, this years edition of the Stampede served up some close to perfect weather and dry conditions. As we were lining up for the start of the race, I did my usual scan of all of the cats near the front and noticed the Eppenator, 2007 Chequamegon champ Jesse Lalonde, Aaron Robnett and Padawan Gammell. There may have been a few others that I didn’t recognize, however the field was strong enough with who I did recognize.
So the race started and Eppen grabbed the hole shot. I was sitting 2nd wheel going into the woods, which is exactly where I wanted to be. I was feeling really good, riding well and had no trouble hanging onto to Eppen’s wheel as we negotiated the serpentine trails of Sylvan Island….until my handlebar clipped a tree. The ends of my handlebars are always pretty beat up from grazing trees through tight singletrack, however the graze is never enough to knock me off course. I must have had some bad karma owed to me, because this time was a little different. I was knocked askew enough to hit something else, whatever it was, it was big enough that I got bucked over the bars. By the time I had realized what had happened, I was lying on my side in the weeds with my bike spooning me from behind.


Maria is yellin' at me because I crashed.


I jumped up and straightened my handlebars, all the while getting passed by what seemed to be the entire field of 50-ish racers. It only ended up being 10 or 15. I ‘took’ my place in line and regained my rhythm pretty quickly. It took about a half a lap before I could finally pass some of the slower traffic ahead of me. At the first open section, I was finally able to get by all that had passed me, with the exception of Lalonde. By that time, Jesse and Brian were long gone.
I tried pretty hard to reel them back in over the course of 5 laps and in looking at the lap times, I was within a few seconds of their lap times, but never faster. By the end of lap 5, the effects of my altercation with Mother Nature were starting to catch up with me. My lower back was killing me and when you have no lower back, you have very little leverage with which to transfer the power to the pedals. My lap times dropped dramatically over lap 6 and 7, however I managed to salvage a 3rd place in the end.


My Mom is in her happy place.



Brian is hairy, kinda looks like he should be in a Geico commercial.


Julie had a pretty stellar race, and ended up 4th overall in a stacked field of 25 women that included the other half of the Eppenator, Robin Williams, Brittany McConnell and a few others. We’ve been exchanging coaching services, strength training for me and cycling for her. She’s been working her tail off this winter and spring and it’s starting to show through her results. I’m pretty anxious to see how the rest of the season goes for her!


Julie is in her happy place too.



Julie's killin' it and scoring some style points in the rocks.



If it hadn't been for a flat tire, Padawan Gammell might have crushed me.


I was pretty happy with the result. Despite the mishap, I rode pretty well and felt pretty good until by back checked out on me. I didn’t realize the extent of the bodily damage until a day or two after the race. A bruised tail bone, which was most likely the reason for the excessive back fatigue. A deep bruise behind my upper calf muscle, which had me walking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame for a few days and forced a three day hiatus from the bike. My calf got the point where it seemed to be getting worse rather than better, so on Thursday I made a phone call to my buddy Dave Freesman of Rock Valley Physical Therapy and was able to get in the next morning. The short version of the story, I walked into Rock Valley Friday morning dragging my left leg behind me. After running some electricity through my calf and an ultrasound treatment, I was walking normally and riding relatively pain free by Friday night. I owe a huge thanks to Dave for taking care of me so quickly, not to mention his expertise in the field of physical therapy. He’s an accomplished athlete and has an intimate understanding of sports related physical therapy.

So I’m a little behind on the race reports, life’s been a little on the busy side lately. I ended up doing the Bone Bender 6 hour down in Missouri the following weekend, some road ragin’ in Iowa City the next weekend, and the Psycowpath race at Swanson last weekend…no crashes, no bashin’ into trees and no spooning with my bike in the weeds…so far so good.


Thanks for reading,

CK