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

Game On

The 2010 season has officially begun and after a pretty rough winter, everything is drying out a lot quicker than expected. I started training for this season back around January 1 and whenever I start a new season, I usually make a few minor tweaks to the training plan from the previous season. On a local level, I had a great season last year, winning the Iowa and Nebraska mountain bike series, however I fell short on the regional level at some of the bigger races. I rarely had the snap in my legs that I had in previous years. So for this year, I decided that it was time for something a little more substantial than ‘a few minor tweaks’ to the training regime.
New for this year…training with power and coaching. It had been a few years since I’d had any kind of threshold testing, so I hit up Zoom Performance for a couple of Vo2 tests to get my training zones dialed in. It turns out that my training zones had decreased over the past few years, which would explain why I never really felt like I had fresh legs last year. What would normally have been Zone 2 training for me was actually more Zone 3 than I had thought.
Power. I’m pretty old school in most of my approaches to training, and felt like I knew my body well enough to get by with training by heart rate. I got a pretty smokin’ deal on a Cyclops Powerbeam trainer and have been pretty amazed with how much easier it is to train indoors with power. I always knew that power was the gold standard in gauging training effort, however you have no idea until you actually use it as a training tool.
Coaching. Living in Des Moines, endurance athletes have a lot of great resources at their disposal, one of which is the coaching services of Zoom Performance. I spent a lot of the off season in the weight room and continue to pump some iron once a week, and plan to continue throughout the rest of the season. I’ve been working with Zoom coach Julie Vardaman in the weight room, who happens to know her stuff when it comes to strength and conditioning. Because she is also a cycling and running coach, her combined knowledge has proven invaluable and I’m very confident that this will be a very positive change for me.
As far as cycling goes, I’m still self coached, however I talk a lot with Zoom coach JJ Bailey about training. Being an age group world champion in the Olympic distance triathlon in 2009, his knowledge of elite level training makes for the perfect sounding board to discuss training with. He’s also the ‘master of ceremonies’ for my Vo2 testing, he’s superb at getting me to turn myself inside out as the test approaches a very, very painful ending.
Sponsors. Like last year, I’m back on board with Rasmussen Bike Shop, everybody knows that Rassy’s is the best shop in Iowa. Greg and the gang continue to go above and beyond any expectations that a racer has the right to expect. I cannot say enough about the support that I get from Rassy’s. I’m also back with Orbea and Oakley, the two best products of their kind. I am once again humbled at the amount of support that I get from Orbea and Oakley. I can only hope that they get as much value from me as I do them!
Racing. My first race of the season was last weekend, the season opener of Nebraska’s Psycowpath series at Jewell Park. The race was a short time trial on a new, technical course that I had never seen before. Julie and I arrived early enough to get a couple of laps in and we both had ear to ear grins on our faces during our pre ride. The trails at Jewell Park are my new favorites in Nebraska. Very tight and twisty with a lot of power climbs and very fast, swooping descents. I felt like I was riding a roller coaster over the entire lap!
Going into the race, I knew that a good finish was going to be difficult. A short 17 minute race on a pretty technical course provided a significant backyard advantage to the locals and those that have their engines tuned to that of a Ferrari. With my diesel engine being tuned more for a two hour effort, I figured that a top five finish would be a good day, given the conditions that I was facing.
In the end I avoided becoming a permanent part of the landscape, kept it rubber side down and came up about 30 seconds short of race winner and main Nebraska rival Kent McNeil. I achieved my primary goal of a top five finish by finishing in 5th, behind Kent, Steve Jarrett, Jesse Peterson and Mark Savery. When I think back on the race, I find myself thinking about how much fun I had riding on some of the sweetest singletrack that I’ve ever ridden, where I typically might find myself thinking about a tactical error in race strategy or training whenever I get beat. As much as I enjoyed this race, I’m looking forward to the longer races that my old body is much better suited for.
My average heart rate for the TT was 173, considerably higher than my LT HR of 168. If you know what all of that means, you’ll understand the kind of pain that I was for in 17 minutes. There were several instances where I felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. Usually when I subject myself to that kind of effort, the main thought going through my head is how I cannot wait for the pain to end and how eternal 17 minutes can seem. However, as I approached the finish I remember thinking to myself ‘wow, I can’t believe it’s over already’. I can attribute that to the fun factor. Did I happen to mention how much fun the trail was?
Julie had a stellar first race as a Category 1, winning with a very respectable time of 23:46. When we rode the course together, I was pretty amazed at how far she’d come since this time last year. She has come a long way and I couldn’t be more proud of her!

Next up is IMBCS #1 at Sylvan Island....which happened yesterday, and I took a flyer over my handlebars. If you'd like to know more, check back in a few days and I'll tell you all about it.


Thanks for reading,

CK

Shebonkan

Gooooooooooooo!

I honestly cannot remember the last time that I bonked. My pre-race food consumption has always been a little on the side of excess to ensure that the bonk doesn’t make an appearance. So why did I only consume 1/3 of a box of cereal and a sandwich prior to last Sunday’s race when I would normally consume an entire box of cereal, maybe an egg or two along with a sandwich if it is a late afternoon race? My only explanation would be the proverbial brain fart.
Julie and I arrived in Milwaukee and stayed with our good friends, Tyrine. We drove up to Sheboygan on Saturday to do a course recon, and as they do every year, the Fat Kats did a great job in putting together an outstanding race course. The course had a nice 50/50-ish mix of singletrack and open sections, the type of course that can suit just about any racers strengths. As we were getting ready to ride, the misty, light rain that was falling had turned into light snow flurries while the temps seemingly plummeted to below freezing. During the ride, the clouds cleared away to reveal warm sunshine that raised the temps up into the 40’s.
Race day greeted us with lot’s of sunshine, however when I stepped outside to load up the car, it felt like it was January. Apparently Mother Nature decided to completely bypass the fall and head straight into winter! Throughout the morning, I had to keep reminding myself that at least it wasn’t raining/snowing on us.
Julie’s race was at 11:30 and 29 hearty souls toed the line for the Category 2 women’s race. Julie got off to her usual mid to rear pack start and managed to pick her way through the field throughout the race. I was only able to see the first lap of her race because I had to get ready for my race. By the finish, she managed to work her way up to 6th overall, good enough for 4th in her age group. I am extremely proud of how well her season went. In looking at all of her results from the bigger races in Minnesota and Wisconsin, she’s made steady progress throughout the season, especially in terms of bike handling. With another winter of base fitness building rides on El Diablo in the TMC Trucking house of pain / sweat shop, I am very confident that she will be even faster next year!


Julie has her angry racin' face on.



Picking her way through the Equalizer carnage.



Rippin' it up in the corners...just like I taught her.


My race had the usual fast cats that take part in the WORS series, including Chequamegon bridesmaid, Cole House. Don said ‘Goooooooooooooo’ and the 36 strong Men’s Elite field shot up the road. I had a decent start and rolled into the singletrack somewhere in the top 15 or so. Once the course opened up, I tried to open it up and quickly realized that, even though I felt fully recovered, I didn’t have the power that I had at this time last year. Last year I had gotten off to about the same start and was able to pick my way through the field to a 5th place overall finish. I knew early on that I didn’t have that kind of finish in me, so I made the best of what I had.
As lap one progressed, I found myself in a pretty good battle with Ryan Krayer and a few others. At one point Ryan asked to get by while we were going through a section of singletrack and with me being in race mode, I was not so willing to oblige. I kicked up the effort to prevent the pass and he mildly expressed his displeasure. He eventually got by when the trail opened up and I managed to stick with him throughout lap one. As we began lap two, I passed him back and apologized as I went by. He replied by saying it was no big deal and that it was a racing thing. So it was all good. Ryan and I have had a lot of great battles throughout the past few years, and I’ve always enjoyed racing against him and I look forward to more of it in the future. Cat’s like Ryan are one of the many reasons that I enjoy racing in the great white north…


Ray Nelson putting me in the pain cave.


As lap two and three progressed, I had no real issues other than the lack of horsepower. I had managed to pass a few others and had caught up to Ray Nelson. Ray and I rode together for most of lap two and three and we eventually figured out that he was quicker in the singletrack, while I was quicker in the faster open sections. So we worked together a little with the intent of trying the catch the guy ahead of us and not get caught from behind. During lap four, I had managed to open up a gap on Ray and I kept the pressure on to make it stick.
As I approached the end of lap four, I began to feel the effort taking its toll on me. Ray eventually caught back up to me and passed. It was all that I could do to hang on once he got by. As I rolled through the start finish area, I could feel the early stages of the bonk working its way into my body. Shortly thereafter, I was in full on bonk mode. I felt really cold, hungry and completely out of gas. On one of the easier short climbs after the water crossing, I had slipped on a root that I normally would have gotten over with ease, and stalled out. I dismounted and quickly discovered the extent of my bonk as I couldn’t move past a slow walk up the hill. I tried to run, however my legs had no response. It was like that throughout the remainder of lap five and as I approached the Equalizer near the end of the lap, I knew that I was going to be in serious trouble. I dismounted at the bottom and was barely able to simply walk my bike up the hill. As I approached the top of the hill, Ron Stawicki went flying by me like I was standing still. I finally made it to the top and managed to limp my way to the finish line.


The Equalizer before the bonk.



The Equalizer after the bonk. The Ronsta passed me like I was goin' backwards.


I am still amazed that I was only passed by two peeps during my lap five meltdown and even more surprised that I was able to salvage an 11th place overall finish. It was by far the hardest that I’ve ever bonked, though I could probably count the amount of times that I’ve bonked on one hand, maybe even on three or four fingers. I am also pretty amazed at how debilitating a full on bonk can be. To get myself to the point where I can just barely walk up a hill….
Cole House rode away from the stacked field to take the win and a large cardboard check for $800. Tristan Schouten held on for 2nd and my bro Mikey Phillips brought home 3rd. Back when I first got into mountain bike racing, Cole’s family was one of the first families that I had met and we quickly became good friends. I have a lot of great memories with them, especially when I could actually finish ahead of Cole. I knew that would be short lived because as a preteen, he had a burning desire to make a career out of cycling and now it appears that he is well on his way.


Tristan and Mikey beating the crap out of each other on the Equalizer.


So I had a pretty mediocre end to the season, especially at the bigger races. Going into this season, I knew that it was going to be extremely difficult to top last season. I’ve managed to improve my results every season over the last four or five years, so a lack of improvement was bound to happen one of these years. It was still a good season and I did have some results that I’m really happy with. I’m even happy with most of the lesser results. Twelve years ago, when I zip tied a number to my mountain bike for the first time, I never envisioned that I would have taken this as far as I have. So with that in mind, I had a pretty awesome year.

So what’s next? Beer, pizza, burgers, french fries…I’m pretty much gonna be on the Mike Phillips diet for a couple of months…sans cigars. Maybe it’ll make me as fast as he is. The Dirty Du is on October 24 and my annual women’s mountain biking clinic is on October 25. I might throw in a cross race here and there. So even though my season is over, we’re still going to be as busy as ever, places to go, people to see…

Thanks for reading,

CK

Cross Dressing with Pat

Taking my turn on Pat.


Cyclocross weather came to Iowa early this year, forcing the ICORR folks to postpone IMBCS #11 to the weekend of October 11. So that opened last weekend up to two different options for Julie and I. Option 1 – drive 3 ½ hours to Platteville, WI for the Blockhouse mountain bike race. Option 2 – drive one hour to Pella for a cyclocross race. I was on the fence until the night before and the weather ultimately made the decision for us. We didn’t really feel like spending seven hours in the car, going to a race that was going to be cold, wet and muddy. So we opted for the hour long drive to Pella, for a race that would be cold, with the only real wetness coming from the sweat produced by an hour long, cross-eyed, tongue hangin’ outta yer mouth, LT effort that only cyclocross can produce.
Doing an hour long cross race is also probably better for me the weekend before my last ‘A’ race of the season. It’ll be a lot easier for my old body to fully recover from an hour long cross race than a 2+ hour long mountain bike race. I do try to stay away from cross racing prior to the end of the mountain bike racing season, mainly because I am very prone to injury when it comes to running, even if it is just a short stumble over a couple of barriers. However, it’s tough to beat the quality of the hour long workout that I end up getting from a cross race. So when I do a cross race, I err on the side of caution to mitigate any chance of having some kind of a blowout when crashing through the barriers.
When we arrived at the course, I had a lot of people telling me how I would have a huge advantage due to the technical nature of the course. I never expect to win a cross race on a mountain bike. I’ve not done enough cross racing to be able to quantify how much of a disadvantage one has on a mountain bike. I can however, tell you that a mountain bike is inferior to a cross bike as a cross bike is the overwhelming weapon of choice for anybody who races cross. So, my goal for the day was primarily to get a good, high intensity workout in. What better way to accomplish that then to chase tPod, JJ and whoever else around in a city park?
Julie raced first and lined up with all of the other women. She doesn’t handle the cold very well, so I was pretty surprised at her enthusiasm for toeing the line. The chica’s took off and after a few laps, Julie had managed to spread a nice coating of mud all over the ‘goose. She ended up having a good race and ended up 2nd in the Cat 4 class. After her race, she handed off the ‘goose which probably had about 10 extra pounds of mud all over it. I’m actually considering a name change for the ‘goose. When it comes to racing cross, Julie and I both race on the ‘goose, so maybe the name ‘Pat’ might be a more appropriate moniker?


Julie puttin' the power down.



Julie running Pat through the sand. Check out Kurt B in the background, kinda looks creepy sitting on a swing with a bottle of booze. He looks like he's thinking about asking Julie if she wants some candy.



Chia Chad thinks he's a mountain biker because he's riding through the sand.


I got in a pretty good warm up despite the cold temps and lined up for the start. The race started and tPod took off like a shot out of a cannon, followed by JJ and myself. At some point during the first lap, Gummy jumped in front of me and eventually allowed a gap to open up between myself and JJ while tPod rode off into the sunset. I eventually re-passed Gummy and closed the gap to JJ. As the race progressed, JJ was able to open a gap on both of the barrier sections, and I was able to gradually close it back up between the sets of barriers. My lack of competence in running the barriers eventually got the best of me. JJ was able to gradually open up enough of a gap that was too much for me to overcome. I felt like a total pud on the barrier sections, it felt like I was going in more of a vertical direction then horizontal. Towards the latter half of the race, the wheels of my bike were banging into the barrier. I was kinda surprised that it didn’t yank the bike out of my hands. I did run the barriers this year better than I did last year as documented on You Tube.


Sweet form.



Racing in small circles around a city park, thinking about singletrack.


About midway through the race, Nate Kullborn had managed to reel me in and sat on my wheel for a lap or two. As we made our way through the sand, I kinda backed off on the effort a little to force him ahead of me. I sat on his wheel for a lap and as we hit the blacktop, he motioned for me to take over. I passed him and as we were going through the sand at the end of the lap, I could here him having somewhat of a physical meltdown and that was the last the I saw of him.
In the end, tPod ran away with the W, JJ came in 2nd and I followed in 3rd place, very satisfied with another great workout and no injuries. My average HR for the race was 177, by far the highest average HR for a race this season. I finally feel like I am getting myself into a decent state of recovery, just in time for the last race of the season.

So with Sugarbottom being rescheduled for this weekend, I am once again faced with another tough decision. Sugarbottom or Sheboygan? I have the IMBCS points title wrapped up, so missing Sugarbottom would be of no consequence to me. So Sheboygan it is. The WORS race Sheboygan has been a key ‘A’ race for me all along, right up there with Chequamegon, so I doubt that I would have opted out of Sheboygan regardless. Last year I had one of my best races ever, finishing 5th overall in a field stacked with some of the best mountain bike racers in the Midwest. I’d be pretty happy if I could equal that, or maybe even top it. I am also really looking forward to drinking a few beers afterwards in lieu of my usual R4 smoothie….

Thanks for reading,

CK

Manawa

Kent and Shim tag teamin' me.


This years edition of Lake Manawa Mayhem marks the end of the 2009 Psycowpath season as well as the penultimate race for the 2009 IMBCS. I’m not 100% on this, but I think a decent finish will pretty much lock up both the Psycowpath and IMBCS series overall, good enough for another season of free entry fees for both series in 2010…a great way to reward all of the division winners in each series.
Lake Manawa is the type of course where it is less about fitness and a little more about bike handling. With a total of 121 feet of climbing (according to my trusty Polar 725) and only a handful of short, fast, open sections for passing, the only form of natural selection was how well you could handle your bike through the many serpentine sections of tight singletrack. With the previous days rain making the course conditions about as close to perfect as they could be for optimal traction, it made bike handling a little less of an issue. It was the type of ‘close to perfect’ conditions such that my bike had no dust or mud on it when I had finished.
At last years race, it was pretty much a follow the leader race. It seemed that whenever somebody got dropped from the train, it was most likely because they either had a mechanical issue or they wrapped their bike around one of the many man eating trees that the trail weaved its’ way through. This year was no different and as the gun went off, holeshot Limpach took the lead, followed closely by Kent, Shim and myself. Shortly after Kevin took the lead, he had minor bike handling issue that knocked him off line and narrowly missed taking out the lead train. Kent and Shim got by and he nearly took me out again when he shot back in line in front of me. The mishap enabled Kent and Shim to open a small gap on Kevin and myself. As the lap progressed, the gap gradually increased and I had to patiently wait until the next passing opportunity to get by Kevin.
We finally hit the next open section and I went by Kevin. At Manawa, a small gap is pretty difficult to close down because you can only go so fast through the tight, technical sections. It took the remainder of the lap to close the gap. I took an occasional look back and saw that I was pulling away from the rest of the field and it looked like it was going to come down to Kent, myself and Shim.
We started lap two and I was pretty content to let Kent and Shim, who happen to be teammates, lead the way. I sat on while they swapped the lead, however I knew that I was going to have to assert myself pretty soon. The longer I waited, the more difficult it would be pass Kent or Shim. As we neared the end of lap two, I made a few attempts to get into the lead, however Kent had other ideas. I could tell that he was keeping on eye on what was going on behind him and whenever I hit the throttle he was very quick to respond and made it close to impossible for me to get by.
As we began lap three, I was finally able to get by Kent. The only problem was that I had to work so hard to get by, that I was temporarily out of gas and had a hard time maintaining enough effort to keep myself ahead of him. He passed me back shortly after I got by and I began to realize that it was going to take some creativity to get by and make it stick. As we rolled through the singletrack, I kept looking for short stretches of openness that might allow a small chance of making a pass.
About halfway through lap three, Shim had indicated that he thought he was going flat. Shortly thereafter, I heard the sound of knobbies grinding against a rim…game over. With Shim out of the picture it was shaping up to become another one of those epic battles between Kent and myself that we’ve had so many of over the past few years. Most of my favorite and most memorable racing experiences have been against Kent. I love all of the many tight battles that we’ve had and always find myself looking forward to racing in Nebraska in anticipation this very situation.
As lap three and four progressed, I continued my search for ‘small sections of openness’ and I also tried to pass on a few of the open sections again, all to no avail. As we approached the end of ‘lap four’, Kent put in a monster effort to keep me behind him and I was content to remain behind him with the idea of balking passes throughout the remainder of the race, enough to make him stand up and exert himself in an attempt to keep me behind. My hope was that this would wear him down a little and make it easier for me to make a pass…and make it stick.
As we crossed the finish line at the end of ‘lap four’, Kent sat up and motioned to high five me. I was kind of perplexed by this, however being the high five kind of person that I am, I returned the high five. He then said ‘nice race’ and I thought to myself, and told him that we had one more lap to do. He said ‘no, I’m pretty sure that we did four laps’ and I again thought to myself that we had only done three. I rode over to the officials table to get the official count and as I rode towards the table, some dude in the crowd said, ‘you guys still have another lap’. I spun around and headed back onto the course, hoping that Kent wasn’t long gone.
I continued on in pursuit mode and couldn’t see anybody ahead of me. There were a few sections where the course doubled back on itself and I couldn’t see him anywhere. At that point, I began to think that maybe he was behind me because he couldn’t have gotten that far ahead of me. I looked behind me and saw nobody, so I backed off the effort and waited for him. The last thing that I wanted was to win the race with an asterisk. I would rather risk him being ahead of me while I waited, then win the race under these circumstances.
I kept noodling along at a medium pace, not really sure where he was and as I crossed the road, there were no road crossing marshals. That should have been my first strong clue that something was amiss. Despite my uncertainty, I continued on and as I neared the end of the lap, I saw a dude riding the trail ahead of me with two kids riding in front of him. As soon as I caught up, I quickly realized that it as Kent riding with his kids! We had a pretty entertaining chat about my oversight and about the race. We did, in fact do four laps. Even though I thought we still had a lap to go when we officially finished, I seriously doubt that I would have been able to get by Kent. He rode a smart race, he was incredibly strong when he needed to be and he was very attentive to what I was doing behind him. I tried everything to get by him and couldn’t get it done. The funny thing is, this happened to me at this race two years ago with Shim. I blame it on my age. Despite finishing in 2nd, this ranks right up there with the rest of my favorites. It’s tough to beat close, clean competition!
So with a 2nd place finish, I’m pretty sure that I locked up the series title for both the IMBCS and Psycowpath. There are a lot of good folks to thank and more appropiate thank you’s will come in a later post. For now, the short list…God, Julie, my family, the folks at Rassy’s, Phil Godkin with Orbea/Garneau/Probar/Sock Guy/Gu (I’m probably missing a few other products) and Rob Versteegh with Oakley. Each of these friends provided some means of support that made this crazy road that I’m traveling possible. Simply put, they are all the best of the best! Julie also rode a pretty solid race and locked up the Psycowpath series womens Category 2 title.

Next up is the season finale for the IMBCS at Sugarbottom. It seems appropriate that Sugarbottom be the final race of the series, as it is the oldest of all of the IMBCS races. Last year, after many years of trying, I was finally able to bag the win…thanks to Brian Eppen making a rare mistake that slowed him down a little. Despite that, I happily accepted the win as that’s a part of mountain bike racing. I’ve made errors in the past that had cost me race wins, so it works both ways!

Thanks for reading,

CK

Chequamegon

Photos courtesy of Skinnyski


Fire Tower Hill...pictures do it no justice.


Another Chequamegon has come and gone. For the last couple of years, I’ve really tried to make this race one of my key races for the year. I’ve really grown to love the event even though it’s not your typical mountain bike race. There are a lot of things to love about the event, the beautiful north woods of Wisconsin, 2,500 mountain bikers from all over the nation, a lakeside cabin and some of my good mountain biking buddies from Des Moines among many other places.
My goal was to better my 10th overall finish from last year, and even though I was pretty adamant that a lesser finish would not be a disappointment, I was a little disappointed with my finish this year. I actually began to feel the disappointment setting in shortly after I hit the transition from Rosie’s Field to the first section of the Birkie. Yep, five miles into the 40 mile race, I knew that it was going to be a struggle.
Back to the start. I rolled up to the start line about 5 minutes before the cannon sounded and slotted myself next to my bro Mikey Phillips. My first major goal of the day was to make the lead break, and the best way to do that is to stay on the wheel of somebody that is always in it. After the cannon went off, Mikey and I were rolling along next to one of the lead ATV’s. There was a tandem next to us with a couple of dudes. The guy in front was pretty chatty with everybody else, which is OK if you can do it and ride in a straight line. This guy could not hold a straight line to save his life. Mikey and I looked at each other with same expression on our faces, just waiting for the tandem to cause the first pile up of the day.


1700 mountain bikers en masse.


As we rolled out of town, the ATV’s took off and I found myself on Jeff Halls wheel. A good place to be, so I did everything that I could to hold it, including shoving a few elbows into a few cats that tried to butt in. As we hit the rise in the road on the approach to Rosie’s, all kinds of hell started to break loose as all kinds of people started to crowd towards the front. I made it into Rosie’s without too much trouble and rode as hard as my legs would allow.
As we approached the Birkie, I could see the lead group starting to form and it was actually within reach…if I’d had good legs. However it became apparent that I had brought the wrong pair of legs with me this year. I tried to go, but my legs said no…no way, not today. I settled into a pace and tried to get myself a little recovered from the effort through Rosie’s Field. I could tell that I had a long line of others behind me as we wound our way through the first section of the Birkie. As we hit a long, super fast downhill, I saw Doug Swanson running across the trail with his bike. I went off line to miss him and as soon I went by him, I heard the metallic sound of bikes clashing behind me. As I started rolling up the next hill, I took a quick look back and saw nobody.
I continued on, pushing the effort thinking that maybe I could bridge my way up to somebody ahead of me. A short while later I took another look back and saw Jesse Lalonde closing in on me. Sweet! My chances of bridging up to the lead group took a huge turn for the better. We rode together for a couple of miles and swapped a few pulls. He asked me if I was good on the flats and I told him that my legs weren’t good for anything today. As we hit the next hill, he swung out from behind me and carried is momentum up the hill and left me for the buzzards. There is a reason that he does so well on singlespeed and I saw one of the many reasons firsthand…momentum.
So I rode alone in no man’s land, with Jesse disappearing into the distance ahead of me, and nobody in sight behind me. I buried my head and did my best to keep the effort going, hoping that I could catch somebody ahead of me rather than be caught from behind. After about five miles of no man’s land, the latter happened as I glanced back to see a long line of what turned out to be about 40 riders bridging up to me. I backed off the effort and about a mile later I was passed by the first guy in line. I quickly jumped on his wheel with intent of staying at the sharp end of the group.


Despite minimal training, Kent Carlson tore it up, placing 6th in the singlespeed class and 83rd overall.



The Eppenators, before they broke a chain and bent a chain ring.



Not having the greatest of days but making the best of it.


Despite the crappy legs, I found it pretty easy to hang near the front of the group. However whenever I took a pull, I was quickly reminded that my good legs were on vacation. So I kept myself in the top five of the group and tried to save myself as much as possible for the climb up Fire Tower Hill. As we approached Fire Tower, I kept hearing the grinding noise of knobby against knobby. One more reason to keep myself near the front of the group. Shortly thereafter, I heard the sound of a skewer rattling into some spokes. It never ceases to amaze me, I can almost understand things like that at the start. However when we’re single file this far into the race, there’s no reason to continually get into somebody’s wheel, and even less of a reason to plow your skewer into the spokes of the wheel ahead of you.
So we hit Fire Tower and I was sitting probably 5th wheel. I locked out both ends of the bike and motored up in my middle ring as hard as my legs would allow. I hit the top without incident, took a quick look back and to my surprise saw nobody near me. So hit the throttle and quickly closed the gap on the group of five ahead of me.
Our group consisted of myself, Michael Simonson, Adam Swank, Ted Hanes, Kelly Magelky and possibly Joe Brzuchanski. We worked together fairly well until we hit the last few miles of the Birkie, which consists of a lot of steep rollers that usually do a pretty good job of breaking up small groups like ours. I had nothing on the short hills and found myself constantly having to bury myself to bridge back up to the group.


I actually felt OK going up Fire Tower.


On the last couple of hills, I gradually lost contact with our group. As we descended onto the finish at Telemark, I closed back up, however it was too late to do anything. I came pretty close to passing Ted, however he saw me coming and held me off.
I ended up finishing 19th overall, good enough for a reserved entry into next years race and 2nd in my age group. Dewey Dickey once again got the best of me and took first place in our age group by a crushing 6+ minute margin. Brian Matter crushed the course record by over 5 minutes and furthered my argument that he is the fastest guy in the Midwest right now. Cole House and Steve Tilford rounded out the top three overall. I did manage to beat my fastest time with a time of 2:10:35, however things like that are pretty meaningless in a mountain bike race as course conditions cause a lot of variance in how fast you can go.


Brian Matter outkicking Cole for the W.



The Eppenators after they broke their chain and bent a chain ring.



Deep in the bowels of the pain cave...


Julie had a pretty epic race, finishing one place behind her goals of a top 50 overall and a top ten in her age group, good for 51st overall and 11th in her age. If she hadn’t hit the deck at mile ten, she would have easily achieved all three of her goals, including a sub three hour finish time. When I caught up to her right after she finished, she had dried up blood running down her arm and a dirt covered face. Despite the blood and dirt, I could still see the smile through all of the dirt and a wonderful smile it was! It was that kind of smile you see when somebody just had a lot fun on their mountain bike.
I could go on and on with other stories about the weekend, and a great weekend it was. In the end, I’m happy with my finish. I can’t complain about a top 20 overall and placing in my age group in a race this big. Julie and I thoroughly enjoyed the company of our cabin mates, Jim and Sally Logan, Ken and Kristin Sherman, Lang Wightman, Brian (Potato Cannon) Benson and John Newell. Good peeps!

Next up is the final race of the Psycowpath series and race #10 of the IMBCS at Lake Manawa State Park in Council Bluffs. The tight, twisty nature of the course lends itself to only a few passing opportunities. Kent McNeill beat me by the width of a tire last year, so I’m hoping that I can return the favor this time around.

Thanks for reading,

CK