Ponca

Last weekend we were waffling between heading to Ponca or Afton, all depending on the weather. If Ponca were to get rained out, we were going to head up to Afton on Sunday. We woke up Saturday morning, took a look at the radar, rolled over and went back to sleep thinking that the Ponca race was going to be postponed. There was a big, ugly green, yellow and red mass rolling over western Iowa and Ponca was on the north edge of it all.
A little later we took a look at the FB page and to our surprise, they said the race was on. Sweet! We scrambled to pack up the rest of our crap and took off about 30 minutes later than we would have liked. We hit I-29 north to Sioux City and the folks on the news were not kidding about all of the hardships that the residents along the Missouri River are facing. Lot’s of flooding everywhere, please keep the people along the Missouri in your thoughts and prayers…
The tread at Ponca however, was close to perfect, slightly damp and very grippy. I’m in the midst of my mid season peak, so I was looking to have a really good race. We lined up for the start and I was pretty determined to get a good start with the goal of letting only one cat into the singletrack before me. The USAC official blew the whistle and I slotted myself in behind Kent McNeil, one of my all time favorite wheels to follow. I’ve learned a lot of good lines following Kent’s wheel over the years, he’s among the best of the best. We hit the singletrack with Kent in the lead, followed by myself, Shim and the rest of the field. The pace throughout the first lap was pretty comfortable and about midway through the lap, the lead group was down the Kent, myself and Shim. I found myself chomping at the bit to take over the lead, but I was having fun riding with Kent and Shim, so I contained myself until the start of lap three.
As we rolled through the start / finish area at the end of lap 2, I took the lead and accelerated up the hill to test the legs of Shim and Kent. I took a quick look back and saw that I had opened a small gap. I continued the effort throughout the lap until I felt like I had a comfortable lead. I’d hit it pretty hard throughout lap three, so on laps four and five I backed it off a little and tried to take it all in. I love racing my bike regardless of whether I get 1st or 50th, I love the people and I love sweet singletrack. The trail system at Ponca has some of the most fun singletrack that you will find anywhere. All of the climbs reward you with fast, swoopy descents that are guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
So in the end, I was fortunate enough to once again take the W. I went into this season thinking that my results would start to fade a little as I’m not getting any younger. However I seem to be getting slightly better with age…I’m cool with that. As most predicted, Kent claimed another USAC Nebraska State Champion title as the first Nebraskan to finish with Shim coming in third. Prior to the race, I thought the state title would be a toss up between Kent and Shim. Kent is always a contender and Shim is having a really good year. I bet it was a fun race to watch.
Julie had a really good race and I knew it before we talked after the race. I can always tell when she’s having fun whenever I pass her. She finished 2nd in the women’s Cat 1 race to Sydney Brown. Ponca is the type of course that favors good fitness and Sydney has a big engine, so Julie has every reason to be happy when she can finish within a few minutes of Sydney on a course like Ponca.

This coming weekend will be a busy one. Zoom Performance is doing their annual training camp for triathletes in Madison on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The WORS Subaru Cup Pro XCT is Saturday and Sunday and the Minnesota series has a XC race on Sunday at Red Wing. As much as I’d love to take part in the Subaru Cup, I’m most likely going to help out the fine folks of Zoom in Madison and maybe do the XC race in Red Wing.

Thanks for reading,

CK

Wausau

There are a lot of great reasons to sit in the car for 14 hours on a weekend trip to Wisconsin. The beautiful scenery and America’s largest mountain bike racing series are two of them. Julie and I made the long drive up to Wausau to do some racing on one of my all time favorite courses at Nine Mile Forest. There are so many different trails there that the course seems to be different every year, and they always seem to put together a great 50/50 mix of singletrack and forest road.
Close to 80 Pros and Cat 1’s toed the line for the start. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a ‘real pro’ even though my USAC license might say so. The only reason that I maintain a pro license is to get call ups for the WORS and Minnesota races. This time my license netted me a second row call up, which I happily accepted. When the Pro / Cat 1 fields are as large as they are here, a call up is pretty critical if you want to have a good race.
So Don said ‘Gooooooooooo’ and I managed a pretty decent start, sitting comfortably within the top 10 or 15 until we hit the first section of fast, flowy singletrack. We hit the second section of singletrack, I think it was the Ho Chi Minh trail, and gaps started to form all over the place, including between myself and the guy ahead of me. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the race for me. I pretty much had no game in the more technical sections of singletrack that day.
I lost touch with the lead group and settled into the second group. Throughout the first couple of laps, I’d get gapped off in the singletrack and then chase back on when we hit the forest roads.
About midway through the race, our small group consisted of myself, Darrin Braun, some dude in a Culver’s kit, Ben Koenig and a couple of others. We hit a pretty techie section of singletrack and like before, I got gapped off by Ben, Darrin and everybody else that was in front of me. By the time I hit the next forest road, Darrin and Ben were long gone enough that there was no catching back up. I ended up with the Culver’s guy, and sat on hoping to recover a little. WORS courses are always well marked to prevent wrong turns, however there were a few areas on the forest road sections where the course was taped off far enough away from a ‘Y’ in the trail, that one could potentially make a wrong turn. As I was following the Culver’s guy, we we’re flying down a forest road and quickly came up on one of the not so well marked ‘Y’s. He went right and quickly realized that he’d made a wrong turn. The only reason that I didn’t follow was because there was a sign ahead with a red arrow pointing us in the correct direction. After that I never saw him again and found myself in no mans land with nobody to work with on the forest roads.
So over the final lap and a half, I drilled it on the fire roads and tried to recover a little in the singletrack with the hope of keeping whoever was behind me from catching up, and maybe close the gap to the group ahead of me. Near the beginning of the last lap I could see a group of three nearing the top of the steepest climb on the course as I was approaching the bottom. I also happened to see Julie about halfway up, always a pleasant site for me during a race! As I passed her, we exchanged grins and urged each other on.
I tried like crazy to catch the guys ahead of me, but couldn’t get it done. I ended up in 9th, maybe my best result at Nine Mile, but a little short of what I was hoping for. The time gaps were close and I was pretty surprised to see that I was only about 4 ½ minutes behind the race winner, Brian Matter. He ended up winning in a three man sprint against Tristan and Mikey with a bike throw. Yes, it took a bike throw to win a mountain bike race. I bet it was a pretty exciting finish for the spectators.
When I had passed Julie, I could tell that she was having a great time. She finished 18th out of 22 in the women’s Elite race. She never really cares too much about where she finishes and is much more into just having a great time. We did this race two years ago and she was still pretty new to mountain biking. She had mentioned how difficult the Ho Chi Minh trail was for her back then. This year was a different story as she said that was among her most favorite parts of the course. Stuff like that’ll always bring a huge smile to my face. Those of you that have significant others that share your passion for the sport of mountain biking probably know what I’m talking about…
So in the end I was pretty happy with the result. Yeah, I stunk it up in the singletrack, but I had pretty decent legs on the fire roads and that was pretty much what kept me in the top ten. After the race, I did a 20 minute or so cool down ride on a forest road that parallels Nine Mile Forest. I rode along and took in the amazing scenery that the area has to offer and had a moment of appreciation and thankfulness for the great life that I’ve been blessed with.

Next up for us is the Nebraska State Mountain Biking Championship race at Ponca, another one of my favorite race courses. I always look forward to the fast, flowy singletrack goodness that Ponca State Park has to offer!

Thanks for reading,

CK

Mankato

It’s pretty tough to beat a couple of days on the mountain bike on one of my favorite trails, with my best friend and close to perfect weather. Julie and I headed up to Mankato on Saturday and did a couple of recon laps of the course. Julie wasn’t all that excited about doing the race as the Elite course had a couple of techy sections that she felt were a little beyond her skill level. I did the first lap with her to show her the way, and then did a second lap to get a couple of sections dialed in. I could tell by the way that my legs felt that I might have the wheels for a good race tomorrow.
Julie opted out of doing the race and put herself into partial soigneur mode. No she didn’t give me a pre or post race rub down, nor did she butter my chamiox. However she did a stellar job with the bottle hand up and heckled me into a good finish.
I got off to a pretty good start and felt good enough on the initial uphill to roll into the singletrack sixth or seventh wheel. I comfortably sat on the wheels ahead of me on the flats and as we hit the first techy section small gaps formed as it was slow going on some of the drop sections. Everybody made it through cleanly and I upped the effort to close the gap ahead of me on the next uphill.
We hit the Quick Release and the guy ahead of me took a bad line on the last drop and t-boned a tree. I skidded to a stop and had to track stand until he was able to right himself and continue on. As we started lap 2, I passed him on the uphill and found myself in 4th place. I could see Jesse Rients and Ben Koenig up the trail and it looked like Jesse had opened up a pretty good gap on Ben. It took the better part of the 2nd and maybe the 3rd lap to close in on Ben. I eventually caught up to him and held onto to his wheel hoping to recover a little. On one of the shorter, loose climbs his back tire broke loose and he had to jump off and run. He was nice enough to give me the preferred line and I passed by as he was running his bike.
Jesse was out of sight, and the leader, Brendan Moore, was most likely all ready in cruise control as he gapped the field almost as soon as the race had started. I yo-yo’d between 10 and 20 seconds behind Jesse throughout laps three and four. I could see him up ahead on some of the climbs, but it never seemed like I was gaining any significant ground on him.


One of the many roller coaster style corners on the course.


As I was heading up the climb on the fifth and final lap, somebody told me that Jesse was just up the trail and that there was a guy right behind me. I took a quick look back and saw that Ben was about 5 or 10 seconds back. I remember thinking to myself at that time that I’d have been totally OK with a 4th place on the day. However as I approached the top of the climb, I started feeling a little better and went after Jesse with a little more vigor, knowing that Ben was right behind me.
About ¾ of the way through the lap, I had found myself about five or so seconds behind Jesse as we were heading up the last climb. He had gotten by a group of Comp riders at the right time and looked like he had an open trail to the top. I caught up to the group at about the worst point in the climb, but still managed to get by. Over the last two laps, the lapped traffic was pretty thick and tough to get by. Some got over quickly, while others didn’t. Everybody is out there racing, so sometimes it’s tough to yield the right of way to the guy trying to pass. I say this a lot, I’m generally pretty good about politely alerting lappers of my presence though I probably sound a little impatient at times. That’s kinda how I roll when I’m cross-eyed and frothing at the mouth, and not always in complete control of how I articulate my words. I love that so many folks come out and race, even if it results in crowded courses. I would rather have a crowded race course and a healthy race culture, than an open course and dwindling participation.


Race winner Brendan Moore dishin' out another beatdown.


I ended up finishing about four seconds behind Jesse, good enough for third. I went into the race unsure of what to expect. I knew that my fitness was good, probably a little above where I was towards the end of last season. So it was pretty reasonable to expect a good result today, maybe a top five if I was feelin’ the love. So needless to say, I was pretty stoked with the finish.

We’re thinking about heading up to the WORS dirt circus in Wausau next weekend, provided we get a little cooperation with the weather. The form seems to be pretty good now, so I’m going to make the most of it at some of the bigger races this month.


Thanks for reading,

CK

Snake Alley

Crossing swords with JJ




My wife makes it look easy.



I typically don’t get too excited over racing on pavement, but there’s something about racing at Snake Alley that gets me all riled up. For whatever reason, I have a pretty decent track record in the 40+ and 30+ categories at the Snake and that record has increased my expectations for the race every year. So, for this year I was really hoping for that elusive double W in the 40+ and 30+ races.
The 40+ race started out on a wet course and I was about as close as one can come to not starting as I’m not a big fan of racing on wet pavement. I took my usual place at the back of the group, alongside Jeff Barnes. We had both gotten off to a slow start and were near the back of the pack at the top of the Snake. I took it easy on the first few descents down the wet backside of the course. Taking risks on the wet corners was not in the equation for me as I have bigger fish to fry later in the season on the mountain bike.
After a few laps, the course started to dry and I was finally able to let it all hang out. By then, however the lead group had pretty much shattered as a couple of guys had taken off and I had no idea who they were. The bottom portion of the course is pretty bumpy and I rediscovered this the hard way as I rolled through one of the ‘nicer’ sections. I was seated, with all of my weight on the saddle, as I hit a bump. I hit it hard enough that it had rotated my saddle towards the back, enough that I probably would have been deflowered by the horn of my saddle if I had left it alone. I shifted forward, bounced on it a few times, hoping to rotate it back with my tail bone and it ended up rotating too far forward. I went back and forth until I got it reasonably close.
Once the saddle issue was fixed, I refocused on getting myself back into the race. I gradually picked off a few guys on each lap and eventually made my way back up to Jeff and a few others. We only had a couple of laps left and it was down to Jeff, myself and maybe one or two others. Jeff opened up a small gap on the 2nd to last lap while going up the Snake. I was blocked by one of the guys in our group, don’t remember who it was. By the time I got around him, Jeff was already halfway down the hill.
I managed to get away from the remainder of the group, Danny Casper and maybe Shim, and did my best to bring back Jeff. He was too strong and managed to stay away. I thought that I had 2nd locked up, however after the race I had heard that Jim Cochran was still off the front, and that Jeff had just gotten by him at the finish. I was maybe 25 yards behind Jeff at the finish, so Cochran must have been right in front of me. Crapola…
For the 30+ race, we had a steady sprinkle throughout that kept the cobbles of the Snake nice and snotty. The pace was fast right from the blow of the whistle, and by the time I hit the top of the Snake on the first lap, the leaders were already out of sight. I was pretty timid on the descent over the first few laps as I didn’t want to lay it down. I couldn’t really make up any ground on the Snake either. Every time I tried to power up the Snake, my back wheel would break loose regardless of where I shifted my weight. It took a few laps, but I finally got into a groove that I was relatively comfortable with. I started picking off riders at a pace of about one per lap, but it wasn’t enough to get myself out of the realm of pack fodder by the end of the race. I’m not sure exactly where I finished, but I still had a great time despite the conditions.
Julie probably had the only dry race of the day. I wasn’t able to watch much of her race as it was sandwiched in between the 40+ and 30+ races. She had a pretty good race and finished in the money for the first time on the pavement. I was pretty stoked for her!
Hopefully next weekend we’ll finally get back on the dirt up in Mankato. I love the course up there, lot’s of climbing, lot’s of techy singletrack, lot’s of fast competition, always a great time!

Thanks for reading,

CK

State Fair Crit

Doin' a little road ragin' on an old school bike.



With some pretty heavy rain in the morning, Julie and I were up in the air about doing the State Fair Crit. The course was still wet for Julie’s race, so she opted for heckling and beer with some of the other hooligans on top of hooligan hill. The course had dried up for the old man’s race, so I suited up and got a quick warm up in. I rolled to the start line and slotted in near the back o’ the pack. I got off to my usual start and rolled up the hill somewhere near the back.
I finally got my race mojo going after the first lap and picked my way to the front. As we hit hooligan hill, I upped the pace a little with the hope of thinning the lead group out a little. I did it about every other lap and our group eventually shrank down to myself, Shim and Dominic. Shim and Dominic didn’t seem like they were going anywhere, so I upped the pace a little more and noticed that Dominic had fallen off. I found out after the race that he had flatted, too bad because he was riding well. So it was down to Shim and I. I wasn’t real keen on it getting down to a sprint, and I also didn’t want to cook myself for the 1/2 race, so I put in a couple of 80% efforts going up hooligan hill, hoping to shake Shim but he wasn’t going anywhere. So on the last lap, I tried to back off the effort a little for the sprint. I led the entire last lap, and as we hit the last corner I hit it full throttle. Shim still managed to come around me and nipped me at the line. He rode a good, smart race and deserved to win. Me? I led almost the entire race, which I know is not the preferred tactic when racing on pavement. On a course like this, there isn’t as much of a benefit in drafting as there might be in a flatter course anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t really care as I was primarily looking for a good, sustained high intensity effort that’ll hopefully make me faster on the dirt.
The 1/2 race was all about hanging onto the lead group for as long as I could. I felt pretty shelled between the previous days workout and the old man’s race earlier in the day, but I did manage to hold on to the main group to the finish. I think a few guys got away from the group and soloed to their respective finishes. Mike Secenbaugh (spelling?) took the W for the Zealous Racing boys, nice to see the race host take home a win from the weekend.
Hopefully next weekend we’ll be back on the dirt in Minnesota on Saturday and Banner Pits on Sunday.

Thanks for reading,

CK

Platte River and Waverly

Me




My female


You have to figure that at some point, my age is going to catch up with me. Especially when I get the crazy idea of doing two mountain bike races in one weekend. The first race of the weekend was the Psycowpath Series race at Platte River. Last years race was cancelled due to rain, so Julie and I were especially looking forward to this race. The course at Platte River epitomizes mountain biking in the Midwest region, smooth, rolling singletrack, definitely one of the more fun places to race and ride.
As I was warming up, I overheard somebody say Le Mans style start. I’m not a big fan of Le Mans starts, I love to ride my bike, but I don’t care much for running. Whenever I run, my old body threatens to blow something out. So the race started, I got to my bike without any blowouts and took off after the leaders. About 50 yards into the race, I had a snap decision to make, plow into the photographer that was sitting too close to the course, or veer to the right of the photographer with the hope that he doesn’t try to move out of the way. Right before I went around the guy, he saw me coming, started to stand and back up. I slammed into him and went sprawling over my handlebars. I quickly got up, picked up my bike, looked in the direction of the guy and said something to him. I don’t remember what I said as I was a little delirious from the red line effort that typically ensues at the start of a race. Whatever it was that I said, I’m sure that it wasn’t very complimentary. I hope that I didn’t offend whoever it was, and I hope that I didn’t hurt the guy.
So I ended up near the end of the field and found myself in chase mode, which is the exact opposite of what I was hoping for. It was going to take a lot more effort to catch the leaders, then if I were to have started with them. I pretty much killed myself going up the hill, trying to pass as many peeps as I could before we hit the singletrack. I had no idea what place I was in by the time I hit the top of the first climb and I was well into the red zone. So I settled in behind the guy in front of me and tried to recover a little.
I kind of knew who the leaders would be, Kent, Steve, MOD and Shim. As I rolled into some of the open areas of the course, I was able to pass one or two guys each time. At some point during the third lap, I finally caught sight of Kent, Shim and MOD, riding together. I upped the effort a little more and reeled in MOD. Shortly after I caught him, I burped the front tire. I tried to live with it, but it was too soft and I could feel the front wheel starting to wash out in the corners. So I pulled over and gave it a shot of Co2. I remounted and eventually caught back up to MOD before the end of lap three.
I could see Kent and Shim up ahead, and it looked like Shim was starting to put a small gap between he and Kent. By the time I had caught up to Kent, Shim was starting to fade from view. I rode behind Kent, anxiously waiting for the first opportunity to pass. As we were flying down one of the faster parts of the course, I took the ‘inside line’ going into a slow corner and made a pass that I normally wouldn’t have tried. However I wanted to get by as quickly as possible so I could get after Shim.
At some point before the rock garden, I finally caught up to Shim. I sat on his wheel for a short while and started working on a plan to get by and hopefully leave him behind. I passed him in the upper meadow section and he grabbed my wheel. As we were rolling through the roller coaster section of the course, I heard his chain jam and that was pretty much it. I rode away and once I felt secure with the lead, I put it into energy conservation mode with the hope of saving what little energy I had left for tomorrow’s race.
As I was rolling through the rock garden, I took a quick look back and saw Kent closing in on me. I screwed up the short climb out of the rock garden and had to jump off and run. I hit the top, remounted my stead and red lined it all of the way to the finish. I held on for the win and once again had surprised myself as I wasn’t necessarily expecting to after the debacle at the start.
Julie had her first clash with Rox and didn’t fare as well as she’d hoped. Rox has been riding and racing for long time, and she doesn’t get beaten very often, especially in Nebraska. Regardless, Julie had a blast on some of the sweetest singletrack that the Midwest has to offer, and that’s all that really matters!

Day two consisted of racing on more of some of the sweetest singletrack that the Midwest has to offer. Camp Ingawanis is another one of my favorites that I always look forward to. We woke up on Sunday morning, took a look at the radar and it didn’t look good. A large clump of rain clouds were heading east and the southern tip was heading straights towards Ingawanis. We decided to make the trip anyway with the hope of getting one or two laps in before the rain hit. My days if racing in mud bogs ended a couple of years ago, so if the rain hit, the plug was getting pulled.
I got in about a lap and a half before the start, when it started to sprinkle ever so lightly. The race started and everybody seemed to be willing to concede the hole shot to me…until Aaron R snaked me going into the singletrack. Somebody else tried to get around, but I wasn’t having any of it. It ended up being Aaron, myself and Brian Furhmann that had gapped off the rest of the field shortly after the start. As soon as we hit the first descent, followed quickly by a long, fast, flowy section of singletrack, the perma grin found its way to my face despite the pain of the racing effort. When we hit the rock garden, I took a bad line and dumped it. Brian got around me and both he and Aaron took off. I subconsciously took a quick look around to make sure that nobody saw what had happened (my inner pride), jumped back on my back and high tailed it after Aaron and Brian.
As I rolled through the start / finish line, I saw Brian standing on the side of the trail with his spare tube wrapped around one hand, draping off of one of his ears and around his saddle…he must have flatted. I kept the pressure on, hoping to reel in Aaron sooner than later. At some point during lap three, I had almost completely closed the gap, maybe within a couple of seconds. Shortly thereafter I was beginning to feel the effects of the previous days’ efforts. The last lap quickly transitioned into survival mode as my legs had reached their point of expiration. Aaron rode a great race and took home a much deserved win. I held on for second and my former apprentice, Padawan Gammell came in third.
Julie had a pretty good day, she got throttled by Robin Williams, however she did finish ahead of Sally Logan. They have a friendly rivalry going on, fun to watch, especially when Julie finishes ahead of her!


Thanks for reading,

CK

Bone Bender

They call these races ‘Bone Bender’ for a reason, there were probably more rocks on the course than dirt. For me, the course was the type of course where it would be a lot fun to ride, for the sake of riding. Racing is a different story. I decided to ride the full suspension because I had heard that the course was pretty rocky. Riding on rocks for six hours would not be good for my back, or any other part of my old bag ‘o bones.
The start was a le mans style start up this crazy steep, loose rocky hill. Despite my strong dislike of running, I got off to a pretty good start rolling onto the dirt in 5th or 6th, and in 2nd for the six hour solo category. The guy in 1st was leading the entire field, including the three hour racers. He was obviously a lot more familiar with the course than the rest of us!
Throughout the four laps that I had completed, I was riding at a very comfortable pace, one that I could have easily maintained and even increased as the race progressed. The rocks were giving me a royal pounding, so much so that the fun of racing my bike was slowly dwindling. To add to the situation, my chain would not stay in my big or middle ring. The straw that broke my back happened on a short power climb while in my middle ring. About midway up the climb, the chain skipped and slammed me forward, bashing both of my knees into the stem and handlebars. With my morale totally gone, I decided to pull the plug. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to race a bike that isn’t working properly, especially with the fear that your middle ring won’t hold a chain when you put the power down. I put it into cool down mode and rode back to the start area, put my bike away and headed over to Geoff’s mobile boom box / pit area and had a beer with the Iowa City and Des Moines crew. On a more positive note, the weather was pretty close to perfect for having a beer with a bunch of your cycling buddies.
On another more positive note, Julie was riding impressively and stuck it out for the entire six hours. She seemingly increased her pace with every lap and passed Sally Logan on her last lap to snare a much deserved 3rd place in the six hour solo category. Props to her and Sally for riding non stop over the 6+ hours on such a brutally rocky course. I’m a very fortunate man to have a woman like that for a wife!

Thanks for reading,

CK

Sylvan Island

This was the first race of the year for a lot of the 40 or so Cat 1’s that lined up for the start and it showed. The start was a complete cluster with about half of the field gunning for the hole shot. A few overly ambitious guys got tangled up next to me and one of them got into the rear end of my bike. It felt like I had gotten pulled backwards so I knew that his bike had snagged something on mine. I was able to continue rolling and ended up 4th wheel going into the woods….until we hit the end of the trail with nowhere to go. Race officials forgot to tape off that section of the course, so we had to roll back to the start line for a re-start. After fiddle-farting around for another 20 minutes, they finally restarted us and once again, there was another wreck that happened next to me. I was able to avoid any contact this time and ended up 4th wheel going into the woods.
As I sat behind the guy in 3rd, I had a front row seat to Brian and another guy slowly riding away from us. We the hit first opportunity to pass on one of the levees and I slipped by 3rd place. Brian had passed the leader and started to gap him off. I tried to overhaul the 2nd place guy but quickly realized that my legs were not feeling the love today. I sat on his wheel throughout the rest of lap 2 and Brian disappeared off into the sunset.


The Eppenator beating the crap outta me.

As we rolled down the start / finish road we were riding into a pretty stiff headwind, so I sat in on the wheel ahead of me with the plan of passing right before we entered the woods again. Aaron R had the same idea and had gotten passed both of us. I grabbed Aaron’s wheel and held his pace throughout lap two. At some point during lap two, my chain had gotten hung up somewhere and I couldn’t turn the cranks. I dumped it down to the small ring and tried again to no avail. I tried again with a little more force and finally broke it loose. In the process I bent my front der and thankfully didn’t break my chain. I was still able to index the big ring so all was good.
At the end of lap two I passed Aaron and hit the singletrack at full speed. I’m still pretty amazed at how much better a 29” wheel can hook up on tight, twisty singletrack. It’s like night and day compared to a 26” wheel. I gradually increased the gap and began to focus on reeling Brian in. The great thing about Sylvan Island is that the course doubles back on itself a lot. So it’s pretty easy to gage gaps based on reference points throughout the course. Throughout the last three laps, I could tell that I was closing in on him by about 5 – 10 seconds a lap, but in the end his lead was too big to overcome. I was very happy with the result as I would have had to have had an extremely good day with Brian having a slightly off day for me to take him down.


Julie loves her new big wheeled bike.


I caught the end of Julie’s race and could tell by her body language that she wasn’t having a good day. She had gotten off to a bad start and just wasn’t feelin’ the love. Racing at Sylvan Island is deceptively tough. Yes, it’s pancake flat, but it’s so tight and twisty along with all of the glass, rocks, etc., that the slightest lapse in focus could have you wrapped around a tree, sitting trail side fixing a flat, or taking a dip in the river. With close to 300 competitors throughout the day, traffic was a little thick at times which added to the already challenging conditions.


My little niece, she loves watching her Uncle Cam race his bike!




Me Mum shreadin' some singletrack


All in all, it was a great day to be a mountain biker! We had great weather, sweet trails and Julie and I were able to spend most of the weekend with my family and good friends. We had a great turnout from central Iowa, and it was great to see a lot of folks decked out in Rassy gear!


Thanks for reading,

CK

Swanson

I can’t believe how quickly winter flew by this year! Julie and I were fortunate enough to be able to spend three weeks through the Christmas / New Years holidays on the beautiful island of Maui, thanks to some very generous in-laws. And yes, we brought our bikes and rode everyday that we were there. If you ever get the chance to visit Maui, bring or rent a bike because Maui has some of the best road riding. In a lot of ways, the road riding is better than Colorado.

I have a lot of the same sponsors returning to offer their incredibly generous support this year, Rasmussen Bike Shop, the best bike shop on the planet…of course everybody already knows that. Phil Godkin of Orbea Bicycles, the best bikes on the planet, especially the Orca and the Alma 29er! Rob Versteegh of Oakley, Oakley Rob has been an absolute champ when it comes to the local bike racing scene. Compass Chiropractic Care, I’ve been making regular visits to Compass for about nine months now and it has made a big difference in how I feel, especially after a long ride.

So for this year, after a lot of going back and forth, Julie and I decided to give 29” wheels a whirl. Neither of us had much of a chance to ride them before the first race, other than a shake down ride on paved bike paths. So we were both entering into some unknown territory heading into our first race at Swanson. I did a recon lap of the course and the bike and the engine both felt pretty good. I got off to a pretty decent start, fifth wheel going into the woods. I would have liked to have been a little closer to the front, but it probably ended up being for the better as it gave me a chance to get a feel for the bike at a slightly slower pace than what the leaders we were kicking out.

I settled in behind Shim and Steve Jarrett throughout the first lap and could see Kent McNeil and Garret Steinmetz rolling away from us until we could no longer see them. At some point during lap one, I remember thinking to myself that a top five finish would be great as it was the first race of the year, I’m the backyard of McNeil, Steve and Shim, I’m old, new bike, yada yada, yada.

As we hit the field at the end of lap one, I started to feel really comfortable with the bike. I slipped by Shim and Steve and kicked up the pace a little. It felt pretty good, so I kicked it up a little more with the hope of catching up to Kent or Garret before the end of the race. To my surprise, I had managed to reel both of them in by the end of lap 2. I had worked pretty hard to catch up, so I sat on for all of lap three in hopes of a little recovery. At some point during the lap, it felt like my pedal had smacked into a root or something. After that my back brake started making an awful squeal, even when I wasn’t braking. I tried to live with it for a while, until I began to realize that I was really starting to struggle to hold the wheels ahead of me. After getting gapped on one of the many short climbs on the course, I figured that at point I had nothing to loose in stopping to figure out what the deal was. I got off the bike, put some weight on the saddle, popped the rear skewer loose and could feel the back wheel reposition itself. I snapped the skewer back in place, hopped back on the bike and instantly noticed a difference how easily the bike rolled.

I managed to claw my way back up to Kent and Garret by the end of lap three. Shortly after I caught up, they both sat up, looked at me and suggested that I do a little work. I took the lead with a little reluctance as I was still a little tired and still had my tongue hangin’ out of my mouth from the effort of catching back up. I led the way throughout lap four and started to notice that I was opening an occasional small gap towards the end of the lap. I increased the effort a little more and by the end of the lap I had managed to separate myself from them. I kept the effort up throughout the first half of the lap, until I felt that I had a pretty comfortable lead and then eased it up a scosh. I held on to the end and was very surprised to score the W. I was very much expecting a severe beat down from the locals. Kent and Steve hadn’t been riding as much over the winter due to a few priorities in their lives and Shim had logged some pretty decent hours in over the winter. Their local knowledge will almost always trump a reasonably fit out of towner and I really wasn’t expecting to finish ahead of any of them.

The bike. My first assessment of the Alma 29er, the bike felt great! I felt very comfortable with the way that the bike fit me. It weighs in at 21.2 pounds, over two pounds less than my previous bike (full suspension). It scampered up hills with seemingly minimal effort, it cornered like a dream, especially through high speed corners. And even though I bleed Orbea, I opted for the Specialized S-Works Renegade for my tread and they hooked up like I was riding on Velcro on the dusty hard pack terrain. It was the first true ride on the bike, so we’ll see how the next few races go. Though at this point, I find it hard to believe that I’ll think any differently about it.

I have to give a shout out to the Psycowpath folks, Roxzanne, Ryan and the rest of the posse work their tails off the provide the state of Nebraska with a quality mountain bike racing series. THANK YOU! This race had no less than 200 participants, which made for a pretty crowded course at times. Crowded courses and lot’s of lapped traffic go hand in hand. I’m sure there were a few folks that I had passed, that either didn’t hear me, or thought that I might have sounded a little rude. I never intend to sound rude or impatient, however it’s hard to maintain my alleged ‘stoic’ disposition when I’m cross eyed from a red line effort. It was great to see so many folks out racing their bikes, especially the 20 or so that came from Iowa.


Thanks for reading,

CK

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