Galena Marathon (6/30) - Race Report from Steve G.

Elevation, heat, and a load of climbing made Galena more of a survivor game than a race! I came in well rested and wanted to have a good showing, but legs felt rusty. Luckily there was 68 riders in a mass start and everyone had to just fall in line. This gave my legs time to wake up and start running from team mate Mike Shaw who was stalking me! There was a few sketchy downhills in-between the grueling climbs so I could maintain some distance. Running my single ring up front (Dumb-A$) I was slowing on the relentless climbs and Mike got by me.. Somebody should had reminded me about the hike-A-bike from hell...I would have stayed home to drink beer!

Lap 2! What, I have to do that again!! Mike and I showed up at our cooler for some refreshments together and neither wanting to wimp out, so we moved on. I set a blistering pace (about 5mph) and Mike was sucking my wheel (drafting is cheating!). Some gal had the nerve to pass us, and Mike wasn't having any of that! So I gladly watched them ride away from me on the first climb. I can catch them on the down... Or I can slide out and road rash my junk!! (that's a first) That took all the ambition out of me and went directly to the survivor game. From there it seemed like I was the only one left on course, no one chasing and no one in sight to chase. Soldiering on, my junk started feeling better, or numb, and I picked up the pace (6mph) and by the time I got to the FUN hike-a-bike I had someone in sight! Oh its on, like Donkey Kong! I felt revived and started picking riders off. One, Two, Mike, nope Mark! We'll let Mark share what happened in his race but will most likely be the last time I beat that machine! Then one more Eastside jersey watering the bushes, Mike.. It was mostly downhill from here so was able to hold off any challengers and get by a few more to finish strong.

That was hard, but I felt good at mile 40 so only 60 to go.. Bring on HC-100!!

Solstice TNR

Rick, Cory, Mark and others have put together a great ride for June 21. The group departs from Military Reserve dog park at 5:30 PM. It will be HOT!!! bring your own fuel....and lights (just in case)!

Maskenthine Classic MTB Marathon – Stanton, NE

I was trying to figure out a training plan for the 10 days prior to the 9-5 that I would be out of town visiting family in NE.  What to do?  Typically, I would bring the road bike and log extremely boring miles on country roads while occasionally passing a tractor or getting buzzed by the many big rigs.  Not this trip though, this time a quick search on USA cycling website lead me to a Northeastern NE mountain bike series called Pyscowpath.  The series offers both a XC and Marathon race the Saturday before the 9-5.  That’s perfect, what better way to prepare for the 9-5 then doing a 4 hour race.  So I entered, packed up the gear, and hit the road. 

Race day is here, we arrive at Maskenthine Lake recreation area.  It is a small fishing hole lake surrounded with dense wooded areas, just 3 miles outside of Stanton, NE.  While the area is very scenic it is hard to imagine a MTB race here.  As I start to warm up, I check out the start of the race and the first section of single track.  The start is a 200 yard sprint to a single track descent into a technical wooded area full of tight turn, big dips, logs to ride over, and a slippery creek crossing.  Ok, I think I know what to do now.  Time to plan. 

The plan:

·         Sprint and get the hole shot (as I was going to do that anyways J)

·         Setup the Garmin screen to count laps and show average lap time so I can maintain a steady pace.

·         Start with one bottle of water and at the start of the 2^nd lap have Sarah hand up the bottle of perpetum.  And then from there have a bottle of water with a Gu tablet in it after every other lap.

·         Take an occasional gel for a little more energy.

Race starts!  I show off my sprinting abilities and steal the hole shot from a guy.  10 seconds in and everything is going well.  Hit the technical area and start to build a gap.  The course was amazing.  All single track switching back and forth through wooded areas.  They even had built in an 180 degree banked ramp section and a man-made rock garden. 

Into the first lap my Garmin beeps at me that is was powering down. Crap! I never started it.  There goes tracking my lap progress.  Alright now the plan has changed from keeping a steady lap pace to keep hammering as hard as I can.  This is my first failure.  End of lap 1, I finished it in under 31 minutes.  Almost 2 minutes in front of 2^nd place.  Now time for the next failure, the bottle hand up at the start/finish line.  Note to self, a bottle hand off on descent into a technical section is not smart.  After coming to a complete stop at the bottom of the hill to put the bottle into the cage, I start back into my hammering plan. One hour down and I have not seen my heart rate below 170bpm yet.  Wow… is this a cyclocross race?  The weather is hot and humid and I am already covered in salt.  Now on to the main failure of day, I never communicate to Sarah my plan of having electrolytes in every bottle of water.  So when I asked for a bottle of water that was exactly what I got.  Oops… oh well HTFU and keep hammering.  Two hours in now, HR rate still redlining.  Finally was able to get some electrolytes in my water.  Too late, here they come CRAMPS!  And to top it off someone is gaining.  Alright, maintain a steady pace, ride through the cramps and he will drop eventually.  Lap after lap, I look back and he is still there.  Course Marshall manning the rock garden would give me an update each lap.  One lap he would gain on me the next I would gap then he would gain again.  Over 3 hours in, going into the last lap, and it finally happened, legs completely seized up and there he goes.  Once I got the legs to move again, I bridged back up and started the last lap on his wheel.  New plan, stay on his wheel, once the legs recover completely, take the lead back.   Ten minutes into the last lap and this guy is riding strong.  Then it happened again, legs seized up and there he goes.  Crap, I just lost the race.  I was never able to reel him back.   

Side note to MTB racers in NE…Kegs should be located at the finish line (if BYOB It should be announced in the flyer) and cowbells are used to cheer the riders on!

1^st Loser once again.  That’s ok, it was a very fun course, great event, and a lot of lessons learned.  Thank you Elkhorn cycling team and Pyscopath series for a fun painful day.  Thanks also to Tom from Des Moines for the education in proper pace setting in a Marathon race. 

Thursday Night Ride (as told by Dave Byers)

Dave Byers posted a great blog of Thursday's ride...click on the link for more info!
http://davebyers.blogspot.com/2012/06/eastside-thursday-night-mtb-group-ride.html

Thursday Night Ride - 5/31

Team Eastside Cycles is infamous for their Thursday Night Rides, aka: TNR's. Our fearless leader, Rick Holscher was MIA for the last 2 TNR's so we had a couple substitutes. In typical TNR fashion, the rides were maybe a little overzealous. On the 17th, Mark Schafer proposed a ride up 3 Bears to Watchman, from their, take 5 Mile Gulch, aka The Trail of Tears, up to Ridge Road. From there we were to ride across the ridge to Dry Creek for a spirited descent. It was clear that some of us were more excited about post-ride beers as we made a few stops along the way to the Ridge. It was a gorgeous evening albeit a little chilly on the ridge. We realized we didn't have enough light to make it to Dry Creek. This meant a quick detour down Trail 4a to Trail 4 to 8th Street. Our group kicked up quite a bit of dust coming down 8th Street on the way to Scotts and we had a couple near misses with some big ruts.

Eric Zuber burped his front tire in what could have been a nasty wreck in an "unseen" rut. (see the yard sale photo and the mini-pump photo) At least we had a nice sunset to enjoy while we waited for Zuber to complete 1000 pumps. (29'ers take more air) I believe one of our newcomers "tacoed" his wheel in the same rut. Luckily it was a rear wheel and he was able to ride home.



























We descended Scott's, Corrals, and Bob's and head down to Sunray for the ever popular beer and pizza.

Thursday Night Ride - 5/24

For the second week in a row, we were missing Rick Holscher. Rick is good at coming up with an epic ride that allows us to finish at Sunray before they shut off the pizza oven.

I thought we would ride Hard Guy to the ridge, descend 8th Street to 4 (Dave's) head back up to the ridge, descend 5 Mile/Watchman/3Bears. Somehow we left the Dog Park at Military Reserve and headed up Mountain Cove Rd. instead of heading up Bogus Basin Road in attempt to get to Hard Guy the quickest way possible. Oops, bad leadership on my part for not explaining the route better.

So, we zipped up the Military Connector to Freeway. We ran across West Water sponsor, Clay Landry, and his fiancé, Jen just before reaching the Hulls Gulch junction. We continued up to the Motorcycle Parking lot and crossed over to Corral's. Zuber and a couple of the others made the executive decision to climb Scott's to 8th Street as we wouldn't have enough daylight to make it up Hard Guy and across the ridge. This ride basically became a reverse of the week prior. We stopped to snag a couple photos at the Trail 4/4a junction before heading up Trail 4 to the Ridge. (group photo and Zuber playing on Trail 4) We had a chilly descent down a much chewed up "Trail of Tears". (see the photo of the sheep)

Instead of riding Watchman, we descended 5 Mile Gulch to Rocky Canyon Road. I don't think I've looked forward to climbing back up to 3 Bears as much before. (it was really chilly -- and I personally was wondering if watching the Exergy Prologue would have been smarter) The nice thing about a chilly Thursday evening is there was almost zero traffic for the descent of 3 Bears.

Pizza and beer at Sunray came along with the usual tall tales from previous adventures.

18hrs of Fruita Recap

Maybe two weeks to go before 18hrs of Fruita, Greg McRoberts and Jon Gould’s teammates from Sage dropped out leaving two vacant spots for the registered 4 person team.  It only took them two calls and the spots were filled.  Brian Price and I (Zuber) would be the 3^rd and 4^th members!

Due to work limitations half of the team departed Wed May 2^nd to take advantage of the Fruita trail system on that Thursday whereas Brian and I joined up Friday morning after a long drive through the night which deposited us somewhere in the desert for some needed sleep.

Impromptu camp en route to Fruita. Who packed the bikes?

Check-in for camping at the event opened in the afternoon so we stocked up on last minute groceries grabbed some coffee in town and headed out to the course for check-in and a pre-ride.

The campground was the best I’ve seen at an event; shaded camping, grassy spots, nice loops and the course went right through.  After setting up camp we did 2 laps on the 6.5mile course; considered that as good as it was going to get and went to check on the cooler.  After rehydrating and relaxing a bit we headed back into town for some good food at one of the local breweries.  Sufficiently fueled we returned to the campground/event and spend the evening filling the air with humorous stories and friendly banter, last minute adjustments and tire selections (okay; only Brian) and a few cat naps.

Night was upon us and midnight was just around the corner.  Earlier the responsibility of team captain and the person to do the first lap was being tossed around.  Being of least seniority (said with tongue in cheek) I was tasked with changing the team name to something more provocative, checking in the team and doing the first lap… No, I’m not sure how this happened…maybe it was a initiation thing, having been the only team member no to have done an 18 or 24hr race before?  I guess there are those of us that are able to take advantage of pre race excitement and those of us who do not consider consequences under the same circumstances…

Race Camp

There was an 11:30 pre-race meeting before the race kicked off at midnight.  Being the first lapper, I readied myself among the restful breathing of sleeping team mates.   No one was sleeping too deeply and everyone was down at the starting area by 11:45.  I rolled around the beach area along the larger of the two lakes we’d be racing along boarders of with several other riders on pugsleys (fatbikes), one of which had 6 water bottles and a mounted stereo playing motivational music to fight back the depth of the night…  Where the race would start was anyone’s guess.  The strategy turned out to be: get there early, start the crowd or linger in the largest gathering and let the promoter approach you.  No need to fear eye-contact.  In fact if you’re positioned right, you get handed the tequila bottle.  I was positioned perfectly.  Take the first pull – pass.  Surprisingly it was top shelf and went down smooth and kicked the slight chill finding it’s hold over my body…

A line was drawn in the sand…..riders lined up…. Three choices were given: 1) sprint around the nearest bathroom facility 2) grab a partner and do a wheelbarrow race around the closest clump of trees or 3) jump (flip not required) into the water; whereupon the promoter would hold everyone else back and let you take the whole shot.  I don’t recall anyone opting for #3.  I hear my name cheered from Jon from the dark shrouding the gathered spectators…“We should start sometime around….NOW!”  I sprinted out of the pack I had worked to get to the front of and ran in a clockwise direction to navigate the restroom.  This is where the rest of the team reunites as Brian and Greg realize that there are 50+ people running straight towards them!  Brain provides a nice feature to grab and sling around at the first corner of the restroom maintaining good momentum….to use to slam into a counter clockwise runner!  Mark running chest bump with a strange man in tights off the to do list…   Dodged a few wheelbarrows, back on the sand, grab the bike, navigate ~10people/bikes on the ground and I’m off! 

Passed a couple people right off before leaving the beach as they fumbled with their lights (turn them on before the word “GO!”) and the race to the first corner was left to myself and one of the fatbikes!  Fortunately he was kind enough to allow that brief window of ‘pass me now or forever buzz my wheel’ and the whole-shot was mine for the first climb we figured everyone was going to be stacked up on!

The remainder of the race was eerie quiet as I flushed out any rabbits remaining along the trail.  Lights snaked their way over the course stretching ever longer as I rounded the first lake.  This was one of two spectacular night views I was able to glance at as I fought my way around flat, gravely, hairpin turns on a 15ft bluff leading directly into the lake below… Not a place to overshoot a turn at night… (I did crash on the very first switchback, and would do that three more times) Rounding the second lake, descending along the lake’s spillway before the final two switchbacks leading back to camp I could make out the cheers of the crowd high up on the dam cheering on all the riders…  It was quite nice to receive the brunt of the cheering crowd’s excitement as we started to put a close on lap 1.

I later learned that the pugsley thought I puked on the first climb and there was at least one rider somewhere up front that did a great job holding many people up and only 4 others managed to get by the pugsley that first lap.  The lead gained off the beach lengthened over the 6.5miles and by the time the first lap was complete the fastest lap of the race was recorded and team 4-play would be able to continue at least two more laps without worrying about fighting to get around anyone until people started to get lapped around lap 3 through the end of the race…  That was the best I could have hoped for!  Maybe the 18/24hr veterans’ gamble on pre race excitement wasn’t so cold-calculated after all? J  Or perhaps I need to start buying different tequila!

Jon seamlessly transitioned from my lap 1 to lap 2 followed by Brian for lap 3 and Greg sealed our first rotation completing lap 4.  Our team decided to take one lap rotations, leaving about a half hour racing and an hour and a half of recovery.  The team behind us (for 8hrs at least) were doing 2 lap rotations, allowing each rider 3hrs of recovery!  We did do a 2 lap rotation at about hour 10 after Brian mysteriously pushed his XX carbon rear derailleur to its structural limits (warranty pending).  After Brian’s mishap, we lost a little time, but nothing that would slide us back into first place.  The trailing team slowly closed on our lead minute by minute, lap by lap until they started their own gap, minute by minute until they wound up about 20min and 1 lap ahead of us.

Fueling was a bit of an issue for me this race and probably didn’t help my dry, unproductive coughing fits either remnant from some sort of infection I had the week(s) before or the dust from the course or a combo of both.  The borrowed Stinger Chews from both Jon and Brian (THANKS!) kept me functioning and some Stinger Gels I brought allowed me to continue riding normally.  Fueling for multiple hour team races does not seem to differ much from 100mile endurance events, although you don’t have to fuel on the bike, which should open up your options, if you have an appetite!  All the food I brought (junk food) didn’t seem quite right and I couldn’t bring myself to eat any.  High calorie food like gels and chews were my go to.  I wish Stinger had come through a bit earlier in their support this year (course they didn’t monitor sports stores and tell me I couldn’t buy their product until after I received what I ordered through their site – I’m just lazy).  I would have liked to have fueled better (Angela reads that as “I wish I had been more self reliant and responsible” She’s right. J ) I guess that’s what HC100 will be for this year! (Chews are in the mail!)

It would be nice to hear what the rest of the team’s take was on the race.  I had a great time, wish I had more time, or had felt better to chat more with everyone, but racing/fueling/sleeping was at the top of most of our lists.  Perhaps two or three teams of 4 would provide all the banter a guy/gal would want at one of these races, there were several groups that did this and they looked like they were able to feed off each other and keep the cheering/racing going strong more easily (or at least with more noise) – so consider doing an event like this, celebrate biking and bike culture with fellow cyclists from all parts of the western states and grab 12 of your local riders and head on down!  I’d love to hear of your interests!

Well done to team 4-play from Boise – 2^nd place!  You gave a good showing and walked away with some woodware to display at your home or office!  Congrats and see you on the trails!

Team 4-Play (L to R): Eric Zuber, Brian Price, Jon Gould and Greg McRoberts