I did this one last year for Fat Tire and have been looking for a good opportunity to do it again. Bikepack to a race, carrying whatever I need for raceday and camping there with me on the bike. And it goes without saying I race whatever bike I ride there too.
Miner's Revenge was the perfect race to do this. The race is only maybe 35 miles from my house and a weekend of camping is just part of the event with plenty of nice spots right on site. Plus it's kind of a technical course with lots of opportunities to hurt myself by riding over my head, so knowing I have to get me and the bike back home under my own power is kind of a good motivator to chill out a bit.
The big plan was to leave Friday right after work and take the long way there, camping along the way someplace. It's usually a nice idea in theory, but rarely works out for me. Instead, I found myself packing for the trip at midnight and on the road the next morning at 7:30AM. I was hoping to stick with dirt as much as possible, but a navigational error put me behind schedule a little more than I'd like. (Did you know there's a drainage ditch between Greenland, MI and my house named "Greenland"? My GPS does.) I hopped out on the pavement for the last 15-20 miles into Mass City and cranked her up making it to registration with minutes to spare. A side benefit of this was that everybody coming from Marquette for the race that morning now knew me as the doofus that rode his bike to the race.
The race went well. I started in the back and managed to work my way up a bit on the climbs, but took it easy on the descents. I managed to avoid getting into the red mist of racing too much and had an enjoyable ride, joking with folks on the trail and really enjoying the new singletrack. Rob and his crew have been hard at work and have built some awesome new trails out there. I wish I could have made it down to help them out this year, but they seem to be getting along fine without me right now. I also just plain flat out enjoy this event. A lot of traditional mountain bike races are lacking in technical challenges. Not so here, and it's certainly not lacking in aerobic challenges either. You have to be a strong all around rider to excel at this event. Which is probably why I finished way in the back. But finish, I did- with me and the bike in one piece.
Shortly thereafter, a friend of mine showed up with a cooler full of beer. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the Coors Light, or maybe it was just the fact that he had a truck and could haul the twisted remains of me and the bike home if it didn't work out, but I decided to do the downhill event as well. I figured I was in way over my head when I was the only one at the start line in spandex on a bike sporting a rear rack instead of rear suspension. Nonetheless, I managed to post some not totally embarrassing times. The course was a fun and it was worth the $10 entry fee just to ride in a 6x6 Pinzgauer up the old ski hill to the start.
We set to work on the rest of the beer around the bonfire that night and it wasn't too long before I wandered off and passed out in my bivy sack for the night. I woke up feeling pretty good, but there was a low point early on that I report with much sorrow. I was handed my first significant defeat of the season by Grandma's Cafe in Mass City, MI. Usually, there are several foodstuffs that I never really fill up on, I just merely run out- pancakes being one of them. Well, Grandma's serves a pretty colossal pile and I was forced to admit defeat and not finish them.
The ride home proved pretty uneventful and I managed to avoid most of the rain. I'm getting my bikepacking setup a little more dialed in. I think I'm going to need a tent to keep doing this comfortably in the midwest, but I was only an extra pair of bikeshorts away from having everything I needed to keep pedaling for a whole week with me on this trip. I'm looking forward to my next bikepacking trip to Copper Harbor for Fat Tire.
I think it's been at least two or three posts since I talked about the Tour Divide in this blog. Have you been following it this year? I'm rooting hard for Patrick Tsai. I passed him in the Almanzo 100 and he's currently sticking it out in last place. It's very much one of those "if he can do it..." sort of things.
So yeah, can't trust commercial media these days to do a proper review of a bike. They only seem to rate stuff on a scale of awesome to mind-boggling so. Internet reviews are almost as worthless, but in this case you get some context. You've got a year's worth of ride stories here to see if I have the same kind of bike dork values you do.
And this year, I decided I really wanted a geared 29er. Mostly for bikepacking duty, but maybe also something a little more XC race friendly than the trusty Hoss. I've broken enough stuff over the years that I had a fair idea of what I wanted. Aluminum frame. Eyeletted rims. Name brand spokes. Loose bearing hubs. Mechanical disc brakes. Usually, the traditional selling points don't do it for me. I don't care if it's LX or XTR or SLX or whatever. Shimano MTB components, no matter how cheap, just plain work. Wheels and other rotational stuff like headsets and bottom brackets are far more important to me. And more expensive doesn't necessarily mean better.
Because I get sponsorship from our local shop- a couple of brands got priority: Norco, Marin, Kona, Scott, and Jamis. I also had a budget cap of "about a thousand bucks". Plus or minus however much it took to buy the bike I actually wanted. ;)
One thing became clear from the get-go, my budget cap instantly put me in Dart 3 fork territory. This was actually OK with me. The Dart 3 is one of the last remaining coil sprung 29er forks on the market and I've never really clicked with any of the air forks I've ridden. I've also got a coil sprung Tora fork on my Hoss that just plain works well.
One bike instantly rose to the top- the Kona Kahuna. I have 3 other Kona bikes that I just love, the Kahuna met all my requirements, and the only real drawback was that it was 9 speed. I was very much hoping for 8 speed given how well that's worked out on the Jake. So I did something I've never done before and ordered the bike sight-unseen. It was a long, anxious wait- be warned Kona shipping is slow.
When it finally arrived, I took it out on my local trails and was extremely happy to find it just plain worked. And it was fast too! Now that I've got some miles in on it (not just trails- commuting, road racing (?!), endurance racing), I feel qualified to nitpick it.
So let's start with the one thing that makes a Kona a Kona- the frame. I'm very happy with this. It's almost exactly what I wanted. Well built where it needs to be (I'm trying desperately to get through a bike review without using the word "beefy"). It has what I consider to be the most ideal cable routing- along the bottom of the top tube. Even has a nod to practicality with provisions for fender mounting with eyelets at the rear axle and mounts at the chain and seat stay bridges. I really only have two gripes- one is minor, the lack of rack mounting holes on the seat stays. The other is more significant- there's very limited tire clearance with a front derailer. I realize this is probably moreso a problem with 29er geometry than the Kahuna itself. It looks like switching to a 1×9 setup will fix this problem and let me run something bigger than 29×2.1s.
As expected, the Shimano drivetrain parts just work. Even if it's not 8 speed, I'm pretty happy. I'm getting some creaking from the bottom bracket. I suspect a grease job will cure that for a bit, but I can make pretty much any bottom bracket cry for mercy so I'm not surprised by this. One thing that really surprised me were the hydraulic disc brakes. I figured I'd end up ditching these for a set of my beloved BB7s, but hey- these things rule. Better modulation than the mechanicals and so far none of the stupid futzing with bleeding that I see way too many people doing. Only complaint so far is the front brake's continual march out of alignment. It just never, ever stays put. I always have to adjust that thing.
That's what the nice lady on horseback at Forestville State Park wanted to know.
I mean, there's got to be one heck of a prize involved that would lead 200+ people to race down 100 miles of dusty Minnesota gravel roads on bicycles, right?
As we were all cramming food down our throats, guzzling water, and making some last minute adjustments to get us through the final 40 miles of the day somebody managed to answer her question-
"A jar of rocks."
After previously questioning us on how many we were, where we had been and how far we had come, she was suddenly out of questions. We were clearly all complete nut jobs who were liable to spook the horses.
Honestly, I was beginning to question my own sanity a bit too. I went into this 2010 rendition of the Almanzo 100 with no idea what to expect. I felt I had a pretty good showing at the Ragnarok 105, but that was over a month ago. I had just returned from my annual week and a half long One Lap of America jaunt where my only exercise consisted of adjusting the power seats in a BMW 335d to encompass my rapidly expanding ass as I hopped from Waffle House to Waffle House across the heartland of America.
I figured I'd be pretty happy with another 8 hour 100 mile gravel grind, but I wasn't making any bets. I was packing a little extra water and food in case I was out there for a 12 hour haul. I had maybe 4-5 solid hours on the bike since I returned from my trip and while I felt strong, I had no idea how my endurance would hold up. So I took a conservative midpack starting position and started easy.
And then started passing people.
Lots and lots of people.
And then I latched onto a group of 2-5 people just slightly faster than me and we kept it up until the ranks thinned out and it was just us out there. Sometimes we pushed hard, sometimes we kept it at conversation pace. But we kept the pace up and held our position. We'd pick off the occasional straggler, but nobody was getting by us.
That "slightly faster" part stand out at all? Yeah, it became readily apparent to me too by mile 50, but I managed to hold on until the 60 mile checkpoint. I figured at that point I could let them go and keep a casual pace for the rest of the ride and enjoy it. Because, well- a self assessment here was not yielding positive results. I was hurting in ways I had never hurt before and had no effective strategy to deal with it.
Now, for whatever reason- and I'd like to think it's because I maybe helped pull for approximately 45 seconds of the 4 hours we had been pedaling thus far, they asked if I was going to continue on with them. Or maybe it they just felt bad for the fat kid who drove down from Michigan for this thing or maybe just found it kind of funny how I'd occasionally stuff three Fig Newtons in my mouth and then try to keep breathing.
Anyway, I jumped at the opportunity and almost immediately knew I was in over my head. I was struggling to hang on to the tail of the group. It was just a matter of when I would get dropped. And sure enough, on a rough climb after the water crossing (Yes, there was a stream crossing in this race. And it was totally awesome. And refreshing.), they started to pull away.
I gave it a go trying to hang on, as we only had twenty miles left but that was it. I was done. Down to the littlest chainring for a couple of miles. It was all I could do just to keep the pedals turning over. Surprisingly, only maybe 10 people caught up to me in this time. I managed to recover a bit and pick up the pace a little on the home stretch with only a few more people making a sprint to the end getting by me.
Craig Linder managed to get a few awesome pictures of me.
Just before the pack really started to thin around mile 40:
And about 10 miles from the finish. With visions of "Grainbelt" brand beer dancing in my head:
I pulled in with a 6:39 finish time. Good enough for 51st. Out of 267 official finishers? I'm amazed. It's enough to make we want to take this gravel grinder stuff really, really seriously.
But I can't end this story about the Almanzo 100 without talking about the event itself. Having spent some time on the organizer side of the equation once or twice, I'm just simply in awe of what the Almanzo 100 organizer has managed to do. From the handwritten note addressed to me in my registration packet to the heartfelt handshake from him at the end- it's a class act, all the way. And even more amazing is that he can do this all without charging anybody any entry fees. I can't say enough good things about this race.
But hey, I have a new bike. And you know what I like to do when I have a new bike- race it in an inappropriate setting! I knew I was in trouble when I took the start line surrounded by 25C tires. General consensus was that yours truly was either crazy, stupid or both with his 29x2.1s and a 29lb mountain bike.
Really, I was kind of using this as a test to see how comfortable it was over the long haul before the Chequemagon 100. I was expecting to get dropped hard and spend the rest of the afternoon out riding by myself. I managed to hang on through the neutral rollout, but when the race started- sure enough, I established my residence in good ol' Offthebackistan. That was cool. I had 60 miles to spin and stuff my face with fig newtons.
Only problem was, the SAG wagon driver wasn't going to let me....
He'd told me to get in my biggest gear, get on his bumper and he'd give me a draft to the tail end of the pack. I seriously considered whining my way into staying in beautiful, yet incredibly windy Offthebackistan, but... well... he was very convincing. So I let 'er rip in 44x11 knowing that I was on the fast track to blowing up bad, but after a mile or so, I managed to catch a group of riders who had fallen off the main pack.
Honestly, I'm glad I I did that. The wind was bad. Fighting it with my 710mm bars all by myself would not have been fun. It was so bad, it literally blew a lady in front of me right over. I'm glad I had disc brakes. The Jake never would have stopped in time and rolled right over her.
So now I had myself a pretty jovial group of riders who had no expectation of winning and were determined to help eachother through the nasty wind. There may have a been a rider or three who bailed on the race early- perhaps to avoid the stigma of finishing with some dude on a mountain bike, but I won't name names. :)
Towards the end, out little group fell apart. I was hurting bad. Really bad. It's been a while- if ever that I've hurt this bad in a bike race. But hey, I finished. Quite possibly dead last or very close to such. But, given the competition at this race- I'll take it. And I was quite happy to note that I had no comfort issues at all with the bike all day. Mission accomplished, I guess.
Maybe next year I need to do something harder. I'm thinking single speed.
I have been looking forward to this race all winter. I didn't have much of a plan going into last year's season and did a lot of the same ol'-same ol'. It was a good season in the end, but I was itching for some new challenges. When I stumbled across the 'Rök and it's rally style, tulip instructions- I figured I found something cool. I ended up signing up for most of the Almanzo Gravel Road Series.
Still, I went into yet another race feeling kind of down. I've been putting a lot of effort into getting the miles in I need, often neglecting a lot of other things I should be doing (my house looks like a hurricane ripped through a bicycle shop, then drank a few beers and piled dirty dishes in the sink.) A lot of these miles have been in some pretty miserable conditions. Furthermore, I'd just laid out a significant lump of cash to fill out and improve the gravel road racing bike arsenal and none of my fancy new toys had arrived yet. Physically- I was feeling great, but mentally- I just couldn't get my head into it.
Once I got to Frontenac State Park and put a healthy dent in a 12 pack of Grain Belt, I was starting to come around. Red Wing was for more scenic than I figured it would be, and the weather was turning out to be downright pleasant. Everything was lining up for a perfect day on the bike.
When I got to the start location the next morning, I parked right next to quite possibly the only WRX wagon as ratty as mine sporting oversized mudflaps and equally brimming with bike shit. I had apparently found my peoples. Sure enough, it didn't take long to find the source of all the rally influence on this event- one of the organizers was Larry Warrington, a long time rally competitor. Mingling about that morning introduced me to a whole cast of cool folks. See, nobody turns on the TV and sees a bunch of Pros slogging it out on 100+ miles of dirt with nothing but themselves to rely on. As such, most of the people at the start line had arrived there on their own, not trying to emulate some preconceived notion about what a bicycle race should be. The bicycles they rode reflected this. Every kind of frame, wheel, tire, gearing and brake configuration imaginable. Sure, there was a definite spike around the cyclocross variety of bike, but as the dude on the Pugsley showed- this was all about the rider, not the bike.
So- great weather, 105 miles of great roads ahead and surrounded by some cool people. Let's do it!
Now, you probably have some vision of a bunch of beer swilling hippies wandering about the backroads and comparing notes on long reach caliper brakes. Such was hardly the case, there's some very fast people in the field and they wasted no time getting down to business in the King of the Mountain competition. See, 105 miles is just too easy- the organizers also saw fit to offer another competition over the 8 biggest climbs over the first half of the course. Actually, I think the organizers just needed an excuse to hang out at the top of some of the plentiful hills just to see the look of agony on our faces as we crested the top.
Us mere mortals (and beer swilling longhairs) knew our biggest battles of the day would be mainly with ourselves and the course. As such, we hung back in packs and kept it mellow, enjoyed the company and cracked wise. Now I'm still very much a newbie to this whole bike racing thing and as one who's discovered the joys of wheelsucking, I do so at every opportunity. Except on this course, I was noticing something- my abilities were not totally in sync with those riding at the same speed as me. They'd bomb the downhills way faster than me, and I'd be left struggling to catch up, only to hit the next uphill where I'd slow way down so as not to completely ditch them. But I still couldn't couldn't hang on to anyone faster up ahead. I was beginning to suspect I might be better off on my own.
So at the halfway break, I took an abbreviated stop and ventured out on my own. I was sort of expecting my old pack to catch up with me eventually, but just out of Zumbro Falls, I had the road to myself. And a beautiful ride it was, along the river and up a two track. And then? Sheer misery. Miles 60-80 were the toughest part of the course. Gradually going uphill that entire distance and just getting blasted by the wind. Granny gear territory. Occasionally, somebody would grind their way up to me and I'd ride with them a bit, but we were going so slow and the winds so strong that drafting didn't really seem to do much. Conversation and riding side by side seemed to help the miles go by a little quicker.
Finally, at mile 80- we were out of the wind and it was no longer a gradual uphill. It was one steep mother of an uphill- and you could see the whole thing winding it's way up the side of a hill. Demoralizing as all hell, right? Well- the weirdest thing happened here- I just got to work stomping my way up that thing and by the time I reached the top- I felt great. Totally rejuvenated. It's like that climb cleared all the pain and misery out of my legs. And every time it would creep back in, we'd hit another climb and I could clear it all out.
As such, I rolled the last 25 miles into town with a smile on my face for an 8:04 finish. 38th out of 76 who managed to complete the thing. And I missed winning a fancy HED wheelset by one place. This race is definitely on my must do list for next year. I'm looking forward to riding with these folks again at the Almanzo 100 in May and if the course is even half as good, it'll be a great time.
"James, you should come to Marquette tomorrow."
"Can't. Gotta ride my bike."
"Ride to Marquette!"
"Uhhh, OK."
So I took the Northwest Road from Skanee over to Big Bay. Was a very, very nice ride except for the segment from Dodge City to 510. Still lots of frost holes. Enough to swallow half a bicycle wheel. Once I had made it that far, no way I was turning back. Made it the Portside around 6pm. This was a pretty good ride, I'm feeling pretty confident going into the Ragnarok. About myself, anyway.
I'm still uncertain which bike I want to use. I have a new 29er that should be arriving any day now. I'd like to race it this weekend, but I'm concerned it might be too slow. But then again, I'm signed up to do a hundred miles of singletrack on it in May. This will be one of exactly two opportunities between now and then to get 100 miles in on this bike- both races. But I've only got a few days to test it out and get it setup before this one. But then, the ol' Jake's new wheelset has been delayed and really could use about $100 worth of new drivetrain components (which is unlikely to happen before the race). Dunno.
I was also happy to note that I got a place in the "Heck of the North", another gravel grinder in the AGRS. This gets me an entry in 4 out of the 5 AGRS races including the two lottery entries. The fifth one, all I have to do is sign up and I'm in. Only problem is, that race is the day after the start of the Trans Wisconsin. And the same day as the Chain Drive. I wouldn't mind skipping the Chain Drive this year as it always kicks my ass, but I really want to do the Trans Wisconsin. But I don't know if I can get the vacation time for it, organize a ride down to the start, cough up the cash for the lightweight bikepacking gear I'd need, or get back in time for Superior Bike Fest. I'd like to say I'm undecided on this, but I think I've already made up my mind. Even these gravel grinders are proving very difficult to train and prepare for. It's very, very hard to find the time to get the miles in that I'd like to get in. Given that May and June are going to be absolutely nuts as it is, maybe I should sit it out the Trans Wisconsin this year or maybe run an individual time trail in July.
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