Favorite Races

The other day while out riding I had the idea that I should post up my favorite races. I am not really one that gets into the "atmosphere" of a race, because I'm not really there to be social, but to try my best at racing my bike. I don't take racing serious, at all, so the perspective that I provide is just that of a dude who likes to stay in shape and needs some races along the way to keep motivation up. I think that I'll just do a Top 5 because 1. I haven't been in that many different races, and 2. I don't really feel like writing that much. I'll probably spread these out over the course of the first half of the winter as my riding will be much less and I'm pretty sure none of the three people who read this blog care about how my Mite hockey team is doing week after week.

So, without further ado...my 2012 edition of my Top 5 races.

#5

Any race at Hillside in Elk River, MN.

These are always great races to attend and when I do miss them (As been the case for most of them this year) I actually feel bad about it. I find myself thinking "What could I have done differently so that I could have made it." Most of the time there is a very logical reason why I was unable to go, but the thoughts still pop into my head.

The races is always well organized and there are a lot of fast people who show up. At only $10 per event it is also a great value. All of the state races are $25-$30 depending on when you register and I don't think there is half the amount of give-a-ways.
I also like that everyone races at the same time. Have a slow friend who races the recreational class? No worries, they start just after you and will finish before you. At the state races each class is on the course by themselves and if you race the Comp class while your buddy races the Sport class, you have to get to the race about 2 1/2 hours before you even toe the line.

I also enjoy hanging out and drinking beers afterwards.

Finally is the race director, promoter, organizer, trail steward...Rich Omdahl. He does a great job of making sure that the trail is in good shape and ensuring that everyone has a good time. It seems that he comes up with something slightly different for each race to keep it fresh.

Hopefully I can make it out to more races in 2013, starting with the Cold Bear Challenge and Fat Bike Fest.

Check back later for #4.

Fat Saturday

This past Saturday was a ride that I knew would be coming up in the fall and I wasn't going to miss it. Last years ride was a blast and I wanted to see if I could find some more winter riding spots. I had already missed two of Rora's soccer games this year due to bike races so I decided to go to her last game and then meet up with the group as soon as the game was over.

I parked at Lucky's 13 and gave Josh a call around 11:10. No answer, so I headed towards the river bottoms where I thought they might be. I called again when I got to Big River park and he answered and told me that they were under the 35E bridge. I hauled ass to get there as fast as possible to not slow down the group. When I arrived four people were already bailing because it was beyond there riding ability. I don't know what they expected from an adventure ride put on by a guy who goes by Death Rider.

We rode on rarely used walking trails, up steep hills, through mud and water, and down sketchy foot paths. The rain held off enough to keep things enjoyable, and before I knew it we were climbing the Lilydale Lungbuster and eating lunch.

We headed back down the hill and across the river into St. Paul for some river riding. I had ridden this area a few times before and need to make it a point to get out there more often. When it was all said in done we had 7 people remaining from the original 15 who started and myself. It was a good day to be outside when I normally would have looked at the forecast and just considered it a lost day.

Thanks again to Josh for putting this all together and providing food at the break! I know that he puts in a lot of time to find all these cool paths so that we can all go through it was as much "ease" as possible.

As I left Josh told me that he expects me to put on a ride in the future. That's a tall task to live up to. I'll have to see if I can find 20-25 miles worth of riding that doesn't cover any of the same ground. I have some ideas already... Think early March.

Some Thoughts

I saw over at the Almanzo site that Chris is looking to take a back seat for the race and bring in a new director. The amount of work that he puts into this race is enormous. I can't even begin to think about how to get an event to the point he has grown the race to, but I think therein lies the problem. Too much growth. There was a market two years ago and talks of a band playing in 2013 the night before. All of this is great for the participants, but for one man to take on, especially running on donations and personal money, has to bring on a ton of pressure. There is a reason that most races charge $50-$100. There are a lot of costs associated with putting on a race and the people who put these things together deserve some compensation for their efforts. I've raced the Almanzo for the past three years and the Gentleman's Ride once and can not express how much I love the race course and all the work that goes into it. Above and beyond that I am grateful for all the races that have sprung up inspired by Chris. Being unemployed for over a year it was about the only racing that I could afford, and it helped keep me inspired to get out and do things, rather than sulking about not having a job.

I am grateful for all that Chris has done and I wish only the best for him.


Other note:

I have been backing off of Strava quite a bit lately. I still post my rides there, but I rarely look to see what others are doing. My latest gripe is with elevation. I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but on a Garmin device you can choose to enable elevation correction or not. (The default is "enabled") So when you do a race and you get two VERY different elevation profiles you have to wonder why someone, more than likely, has disabled elevation correction to make it look as if there ride was more difficult than it actually was.
At this years Almanzo there were people who posted elevations around 7,600ft, while others were around 4,600ft. Where did they do 3,000  more feet of climbing? I've climbed 10,000ft in a day before, and I can tell that the Almanzo is not even close to that. Anyway, people use the site differently, I would just think that when you look back at a week, month, or years from now, you'd prefer accurate data so that you truly know what you are capable of.

Heck of the North

This past Saturday was the Heck of the North in Duluth. I had heard good things about it but was never able to make it till this year. I knew that the course was relatively flat but had plenty of challenges along the way. My original plan was to drive up late on Friday and sleep in the car. This got scrapped when I wasn't able to drop the kids off until 8pm. I decided to stay home and just go to sleep early and wake up at 4:15am. This had me a little worried because if anything went awry it could mean missing the race. I packed the car up with everything except my bike so that I could just wake up, grab a couple things and go. I fell asleep early  and got up right on time. I noticed though that I did not plug my phone in knew that it would cause a couple issues. I then grabbed a Monster and hit the road. As I was on 35 I saw a cop pulled over a guy and was giving him the DUI test. I then did a wallet check and realized that I had forgotten mine. I did a quick pros/cons thought and decided to turn around on 36. Now I started to stress a bit about being there by the 7:30 registration deadline. I got home, grabbed my wallet and headed out again. I normally drive fast, but now I made it a point to drive fast. I cruised at 80mph almost the entire way and made it to the lot about 7:20am. I felt relieved and got ready to ride.

The race start was a little warmer than I expected, which was nice so I only wore a long sleeve shirt to keep me warm for a bit. We did about a 2 mile roll out and then the race was on. I was able to stay with the lead pack till about mile 7 where it got too fast for me. At mile 8 there was an eight foot pipe in the middle of the road. Some people choose to walk around it, while others were trying to go over it. I was about to go over when I remembered that the bottom of my shoes are a hardened plastic and would not grip well, and decided to go around. As I was waiting to get across the creek, I saw two people trying to go over fall flat on their face. I was now very happy I didn't try and go over.

Not too long after that we were on to snowmobile trails. I started with a big group of people but they were hopping off of their bikes frequently and messing with my "flow" so I decided to stop and turn my headphones on and let them spread out. This worked pretty well. I caught back up to the group and was able to pass all of them before we exited back onto the gravel.

From there it was a pretty standard ride. Just before the checkpoint the wash boarding in the road that had been sporadically present was now unavoidable. It slowed my pace of 16-17mph to 13-14. After the checkpoint and off the road (I think it is called Drummond) the wash boarding became minimal again. 

We hit another section of snowmobile trail that was a little rocky, but once again a lot of fun. It's always good to break up the monotony of strictly gravel roads. Once we turned back on to gravel I took the opportunity to snap this photo: 

Off in the distance is Lake Superior. I think we had about 20 miles to go at this point.

Making my way to the finish my legs felt good and was decided to push a little harder. I stopped at mile 91 to get some water from some kids cheering us on. It's always nice to get some cold water. Shortly after that I was flagged down by a lady holding a clipboard and almost didn't stop because I thought she wanted me to take a survey. Turns out, there was a power line down up ahead and we needed to be rerouted.

From there I kept a good pace and other than a little walking up Pleasant View finished strong.

My time was 7 hours and 25 minutes, a personal best.

The event was very well organized and I had a great time. Thanks to all the volunteers that make these events so great! The organizers always seem to go above and beyond expectations.

The Farm (Updated 9/28)

My family has a piece of property about a hour and a half north of the cities. I think that it has been in the family for a little over a hundred years now. My Great Grandfather bought 40 acres of land and began to farm it. He quickly realized that he was not making as much money as he would have liked and quit to pursue other endeavors. As time went on he bought surrounding properties and there is now 280 acres of land. There are two good sized fields, lots of woods, and a river that runs through. It is a good place to go deer hunting and that is about it right now... Everything else to do with the property is work. There is always something that needs to be fixed or updated, but it keeps my Grandpa and Dad busy so that is good.

1953(?) Farmall Super M

Today's project is building a large shed that will house the above tractor and some other odds and ends. Three years ago my Dad restored another old Farmall and enjoyed it so much he decided to do it again. He says that this one has "Live" hydraulics so you can use the hydraulics while you are driving rather than having to come to a stop. It also has a wide base on the front rather than the narrow base on his other tractor.



 

Two trusses up.

When I got up there in the morning the walls were already up and the trusses were built. We had to lift the trusses up on to the frame, stand them up and put the supports across from one to the other. My Grandpa being an old Honeywell engineer is very meticulous with how things must be done and in what order. There is no convincing him to deviate from his plan. Sometimes this proves to be frustrating, but today everything went together very smoothly. No CAD  needed, just a pencil and a few pieces of graphing paper.

Getting there.

After we had everything up it was time for me to go up top and start screwing down the roofing. This is where having a nice drill comes into play. I have a cordless Ryobi that is adequate for small projects around the house, but is heavy and the battery life isn't great. My Dad brought his DeWalt with and it worked great. It was light, powerful and the battery lasted. The only issue that we ran into was the metal getting too hot. My shoes started to slip and I couldn't put my hands down because it would burn. There was one point where I though I was stuck sitting down and started to slowly slip down. I wasn't real worried because it was only about an eight foot drop, but I managed to get up and back to the peak where I could put a foot on each side. I screwed in the top, and they screwed in the bottom for the remainder of the day. I need to go back there and finish screwing it down in the middle.

From the inside.




From the outside



Done for the day.



At the end of the day we got everything accomplished that we set out to do and no one got hurt! It is fun working on projects where things are planned out properly and everything goes the way it should.





59 Cadillac



Side story. This is a 59 Cadillac DeVille that my Great Grandpa drove. It is the last year the they put the wings on the back and has the first stereo that you could preset the stations. He was t-boned by a drunk driver in Mora where the Vasaloppet statue sits in 1964 and there the car has sat since.

It is smashed in pretty good on the other side. There is no doubt that if the same thing happened today he would have been crushed to death. Instead, he had a few bumps and bruises and walked away relatively unscathed. 

Gents Ride

I wanted to do this race for a while but getting a team together proved harder than I thought. The week before I had no team and just planned on going down and enjoying the ride. On Tuesday I got an email about being on a team and decided to go for it. When I got to Spring Valley in the morning I met up with my team and we made our way to the start line across the street. We started out at a good pace with all of us riding together at a comfortable pace. With a little leapfrogging we made our way to Preston together. They wanted to stop at the store, but I hate stopping so I continued on at a slightly slower pace. It is hard to ride slow with all the rollers on the course. You either have to hammer up a hill or coast down it. It was cold and windy and all I could think of was this video:



 I arrived at the checkpoint where there was water, coke, cured meats, cheese, the works really. Shortly after I stopped my teammates arrived as well. We hung out for about 10 minutes and then got back on the road. I decided to  snap a few pictures with the day old iPhone 5 before we left though.



35 miles to go.



The climb out of Forrestville State Park is always tough because your legs are not quite back into riding yet. I managed to climb every hill until the 92? mile mark. This Oriole hill is a pain i the ass at this point. truth be told, I don't know if I could climb it if it were at mile 5. Anyway, I got to the top and rode the rest of the way back to the finish. 99.7 miles. This felt like my best gravel race yet. I never went to a dark, f this, place or didn't want to be on the course anymore. The clock however would show that I was 8 minutes slower than in May. I analyzed some data and am still baffled by this, but hey, the clock doesn't lie.

I had a great time and am looking forward to the 2013 Almanzo/Gentlemans Ride.

The panoramic shot is not easy to take

It looks a little hazy, but the day was beautiful.

Recap

Family evening ride to the city.

Work is going well, but keeps me away from posting updates. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of the computer again. Maybe I should start writing my updates at work. Anyway, August was a fun month. We went to the Wisconsin Dells for a weekend and had a great time. I've also been riding my bike to work so that helps me get that in without taking time away from the kids. I got in about 430 miles for August, I am happy with that.

DT Stillwater

Yesterday I went on a river ride with Josh, Ben, and Marty. We started just outside Cannon Falls on the Cannon Falls river and rode our fat bikes through the river until Welch where we had lunch and took the Cannon Valley trail back to the cars. It started out so so, but after some experimentation you can really see what these bikes are capable of. There were times my handle bars were underwater and I was still pedaling along. Those guys took a bunch of pictures and video that I will link to later. All in all it was a great day.

This month I am riding in the Heck of the North in Duluth and am going to try and get on a team for the gentleness ride in Spring Valley.

I'll try and update more and take some pictures, because a blog without pictures is pretty lame.

Rora checking out the bikes at the fair