Race recaps
Going into this race I just wanted a buckle - period. I figured I wouldn't have much of a chance at 9 hours, but I wanted to be darn sure I came home with a buckle.
Instead we got rain. And the Maah Daah Hey is just flat out not ridable when wet. The dirt turns to extra-clingy peanut butter and gums up every moving part of your bike. Tires become 15 pound immovable mud-donuts and derailleurs get ripped from their hangers.
The Dirty Lemming is my favorite gravel race. Jim & his crew reflect all that is great about gravel grinding - low key, competitive w/o being cut-throat, more interested in connecting with other riders & building community than anything else. If you've forgotten why you ride then come to the Lemming and get filled up again.
Rainy, cold and muddy. Hmmm.
An incredible trail and a great mountain bike race. A true test, mentally & physically.
The 2015 version of the Dirty Kanza 200 was like a 100 mile mud-filled survival fest followed by a 100 mile gravel race. Throw in a steady 15 mph wind and I had the ingredients for a 17 hour and 45 minute adventure race. A full 3 hours longer than I had hoped for. And to be honest, I had a good day!
At around mile 70 it became clear from looking at the map on my GPS that I was not going to be done after 75 miles.
Truth be told, I had a bit of a lull after the Maah Daah Hey 100 - that race took some time to recover from. Not just physically, but mentally. I just didn't feel like getting back on my bike again for awhile.
The trail is absolutely amazing, totally exceeding all of my expectations. 100 miles of relentless single-track winding through the badlands of North Dakota. Riding the entire trail in one day was nuts, so much harder than I anticipated. We covered about 105 miles with nearly 11K feet of ascending and 11K feet of descending trail.
The 99er was a mudfest. Maybe not as bad as years past, but still muddy. Brent and I both went into the 99er a little overconfident. Having survived the Kanza and being only 6 days removed from an 8 day mountain bike trip out West the general feeling was that the extra red-blood cells would easily lift us through a mere 99 miles. We were wrong.
The track was fast and the weather was perfect. No doubt the talk after the race was about the three horses who decided to run along with us.
The wind was a challenge all day. I was fortunate to find a group of about 12 -15 riders for the 1st half of the race which was huge - I didn't want to be out there fighting the wind alone. The second half was predominantly downwind, which was lucky for me, because I rode most of it alone.
We didn't know what to expect of the ride, for some reason I thought we'd be on pavement; instead nearly the entire course was on gravel, or more precisely on frozen dirt roads. We were lucky with the temps - cold enough for the roads to be frozen and not so cold as to be uncomfortable.
The 100K Encierro Velo wound predominantly through cattle & horse ranches, with occasional rock outcroppings on the edges of a wash or the crest of a hill and mountains in the western distance. A great start to my 2018 racing season.