Visiting McKnight Prairie

This morning, I went with the girls to Carleton’s McKnight Prairie, one of the only extant prairie remnants in Minnesota – or the Midwest. Though I’ve explored every part of Carleton’s Arboretum, I’ve never actually made the short drive out to McKnight. I talked the girls into going by explaining that McKnight looks the prairie probably did when Laura and Mary Ingalls made their way west from Wisconsin into Minnesota.
Tired-Out Pioneer Girls

I talked them into walking almost the whole length of the preserve by letting them take pictures of anything that struck their fancy. Here are twenty of their shots:

I also took a photo of the oddest sight in the place: prickly-pear cacti! In Minnesota!
Cacti in Minnesota!!!

Belated Status Updates

I was busy today. How busy? So busy I didn’t have a chance to update my social-media status until after I got home. A day without a couple updates is like a day without coffee – hardly worth the trouble. In an effort to partly rectify this horrible situation, here are six status updates I should have posted today:

  • 7:45 a.m. Two parent geese were bookending a row of goslings at the pond this morning. All were staring into the water. I think the parents were getting the kids psyched up to swim.
  • 10:10 a.m. Getting in even 15 minutes early has a huge payoff: I’ve done a ridiculous amount of work in the last 2.5 hours.
  • 11:55 p.m. The gendered divergence in students’ clothing is very pronounced these days. Many women look like their going to work, or at least to a nice party. Most men look like their going to sleep under a boxcar.
  • 12:30 p.m. I’m at the annual lunch thrown by the College for our non-profit community partners. It’s a great event, and this year’s speakers were excellent – a 3rd grade teacher at Julia’s elementary school and a Carl who’s tutored in her room for three years.
  • 2:45 p.m. The barefoot cult at Carleton is getting out of hand: libraries and bathrooms should be footwear-mandatory zones.
  • 4:50 p.m. Someone parks a sweet 1980s Raleigh road bike outside the art building every day. Chrome and yellow-orange. WANT.

No Plan B: Almanzo 100 Race Report (part II)

In the lengthy first part of my Almanzo 100 race report, I dealt mostly with the overall shape of the experience for me. This second part relates some details that I want to remember, that fill out the Part I post, and that might be interesting to other cyclists who want to ride the Almanzo, other gravel events, or just gravel in general. (For much, much more of the same, see the collection of other riders’ Almanzo and Royal race reports…)
Almanzo 100
Continue reading No Plan B: Almanzo 100 Race Report (part II)

Farty Fart Fart

At bedtime, after a few hours of hilarity and insane fun*, Julia looked over at me with her shy questioning eyes and asked, “Daddy, what does ‘fart’ mean?” I laughed (who wouldn’t?) and said that it was a rude word for passing gas. She chuckled, relieved, and said that her best friend at school had used the word that day. Julia guessed the meaning, but wasn’t sure she was right, so she had to ask.

Vivi of course found this exchange hilarious, and accused me of farting a lot. Which may or may not be true.

Then I cautioned them not to use the word much, because most people will find it very rude, and kids who say it very badly behaved. This will have no effect on their use of the word in the future, I’m sure. But I figure we did something right if Julia made almost all the way to age seven before learning any rude words.

*Julia, eating a Hershey’s Krackel candy bar: “Rice in a candy bar? I don’t want rice in a candy bar. It tastes like dinner, not dessert.”

No Plan B: Almanzo 100 Race Report (part I)

Trying to accommodate my athletic-endeavor verbosity, I’ve divided my race report into two pieces: this summary of the race and a separate, more detailed description of the experience, to follow soon. These 800-odd words are the one to read if you’re just passingly curious. And if you’re not even that, I don’t blame you!

Almanzo 100 (2011)
Almanzo 100 (2011)*

The Almanzo 100 is a hundred-mile “century” bike race on gravel roads around Spring Valley, Minnesota. As the organizer, the inimitable Chris Skogen, said, “These are challenging courses. 100 miles is no small task… and when you ride them on gravel they become something entirely different. It is going to punish you, but it is definitely manageable if you pace yourself and understand the big picture.”

True enough, but the hundred miles we rode on May 14 were different still, thanks to 40°F temperatures, 15-30 mph northerly winds, and a steady rain. It was – as one racer wrote online – “Hellmanzo.” The proof is in the final results: “730 people signed up to race, 177 people finished. Of the 177, 151 people finished the Almanzo 100 and 26 people finished the Royal 162” (a new 162-mile gravel trek).

More than anything, I’m pleased and surprised to be one of the Almanzo finishers. The rain and gravel combined to turn the course into a ribbon of sloppy gray-brown mud that quickly covered everyone from the leaders to the red lantern, and the wind helped make everything cold and wet, but I never really thought about quitting. Maybe it was sisu, the Finnish sense of determination, or just forgetting that I could stop. And actually, I couldn’t. Unlike apparently a lot of other racers, I had no Plan B – no car-driving friend meeting me at crucial spots, no stopping point to call for help – so I just kept going, turning the pedals over and over and over.

Apart from having no Plan B, I was also enjoying myself – a lot. For one, I’d never been on the race’s Fillmore County roads, so literally every yard of gravel was new. And it was spectacular: endless straightaways through rolling farm country, high-speed descents with “holy shit!” corners, and long grinding uphills through woods and limestone road cuts. The Almanzo course covered fantastic cycling terrain that became borderline magical when everything began glowing from the rain and my eyes went fuzzy from tiredness.

I bonked hard twice during the race – once around mile 60 for probably a half hour and then again for a few minutes around mile 80. The former bonk was one of the strangest experiences of my life: my body felt totally powerless and my brain felt like the bastard son of exhausted and drunk. After what must have been several miles of slow, slower, slowest pedaling, I realized that I had bonked – maybe I even said it out loud – and I dug a gel out of my bar bag. Those hundred calories did the trick, and brought me back to something like reality – making 10 mph instead of 6.

The bonks were the low points of the race for me. The terrain itself was one of the race’s high points, while another was the near-religious sensation of pushing my body to an extreme for a long, long time. A third high was talking with other racers as I passed them or they passed me. Unlike running races or even ski racers, there’s a lot of talking, about all kind of things: the shitty conditions, our bikes, gear choices, the shitty conditions, whether we’d missed a turn, food and drink, the shitty conditions…

The race was too hard and too long to remember much except for some snippets, but I do recall a few things: being surprised to see that other riders’ faces were just two eyes in a mud mask, studying the Specialized bike logo tattooed on one guy’s calf, wishing I had a rain jacket, wondering if another kind of shoes would have handled the wet better, laughing out loud at five black cows lined up from calf to bull watching us pass, gasping with happiness when we found a huge vista at the top of one mammoth climb, listening to the weird din of a poultry farm with all the birds in individual pens, enjoying the pleasing shock of the knee-deep water crossing, talking for a few minutes with an old guy who was out collecting cans in the ditches, nodding at a farmer who was standing at the end of his driveway clapping for us and saying “Dedication!” over and over, fantasizing about having two cups of coffee (one in each hand)…

The end result was that I rode for 9:08, averaging about 11.5 miles an hour and maxing out at 37 mph on one of the early white-knuckle descents. (I didn’t crash at all.) On the bike, I consumed six gels, two nutrition bars, two peanut butter sandwiches, 40 ounces of carb drink, 48 ounces of water, and 24 ounces of (flat) Coke. Against that, I burned something like 6,000 calories (about 2.5 days worth of calories). If I averaged about 90rpm, I would have turned my cranks about 45,000 times. And in the end I finished in 80th place out of 150 finishers – who were themselves less than a quarter of the 613 registered male, female, and tandem entries. Not bad: the top 15% of all registrants.

* This photo is a crop of a shot taken by Craig Linder and published to Flickr. Thanks, Craig!

Almanzo Video & Pictures

The torrent of stuff about the Almanzo 100 is just starting to trickle onto the web, but here are a few good items. First, the race director, Chris Skogen – who stayed the finish line to shake the hand of every single finisher, even the poor bastards who finished at 11 p.m. – shot this video of the end of the rollout, about a mile in:

Untitled from Chris Skogen on Vimeo.

At least two excellent photographers have already published great photosets to the web – a small set by David Gabrys and a gargantuan set by Craig Lindner on Flickr. The latter contains this wonderful shot of what looks to be the lead pack, sometime in the first 50 miles. We all looked like this by then:
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And here are two shots of me at different hill-cresting spots in (I think) the middle third of the race. I don’t even have the wherewithal to look at the camera! Bikes don’t need fossil fuels to go, but I was gassed by then.
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IMG_2866.jpg

Pre-Race Jitters

No, not mine. The weather’s:

Forecast for Spring Valley, MN

Saturday: A chance of showers in the morning…then showers in the afternoon. Highs around 50. North winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80 percent.

and Vivi’s: she realized at bedtime tonight that I’d be gone almost all day on Saturday – at least from the girs’ breakfast until dinner. Compounded by being way overtired (so tired she fell asleep in the car tonight!), this realization drove her around the emotional bend – crying, moaning, calling, “Noooooo, Dadddddddy, don’t gooooooooo!” She didn’t like any of my ideas for “special things” to do on Sunday, or even my promise to find something to bring to them tomorrow night (read: a convenience-store cookie). She did, however, calm down when her therapist, Julia, whispered some sort of secret plan to her. I think it involves them making dinner tomorrow night. I hope they make something hearty: I’ll need it.

Race Week!

Dusk Ride

Seven days from right now, I will (with luck) be well done with the Almanzo 100 – my big spring race, 100 miles of gravel roads around Spring Valley, Minnesota. I’ve been training hard since well before the snow melted, and I’ve liked the way my work has been paying off. I’ve never felt fitter in my life. The next seven days will be largely devoted to keep the mental and physical stoke high and filling my body with as many calories as possible. The former task is easier when I read stuff like  the race organizer’s blog post on last-minute preparations and expectations, including this bit:

These are challenging courses. 100 miles is no small task (and 162 is certainly nothing to balk at) and when you ride them on gravel and they become something entirely different. It is going to punish you, but it is definitely manageable if you pace yourself and understand the big picture.

I’m eager to get out there!

Best Week Ever?

End of the Day...

Driving back yesterday from seeing friends in Rochester, I realized that it has been a damn good week – probably one of the best “usual” weeks ever. Last Sunday was a pretty uneventful day around the house, but I got to spend some great time with the girls and enjoyed a nice 90-minute ride in sunshine that has been rare this spring. And I also played perhaps too much with my new iPhone, which is just as amazing as I’d hoped.

On arriving at work on Monday, I found an email message revealing that a very worthy junior faculty member had been recommended for a major grant, one we’d worked very hard to assemble last fall. Though we spent much of the week finalizing various details, the grant award should now come through pretty soon, which will be very satisfying to see.

Feeling pretty happy on Monday, I had lunch outside in a picturesque spot on campus and finished Steven Johnson’s remarkable book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, which is part intellectual history, part how-to for thinking better, and entirely inspiring. I’m already thinking of ways to start practicing some of the ideas he describes. And I was surprised to get a text, of all things, from my wife, of all people.

Tuesday, my work email brought another good message, this one regarding the award of a very prestigious and hard-to-get grant to another worthy junior faculty member. Great in its own right, this news got even better later in the week when we engineered a way for him to both accept this grant and a smaller but equally important grant he had already received – effectively giving him 15 months of funding to work on his current project, not 3. Again, very satisfying.

Tuesday night, on a whim I watched the first half of the excellent French biopic/crime thriller Mesrine, which blew me away. I watched the second half on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and found the whole movie to be an exceptional piece of work that anyone who likes crime movies should see.

Wednesday morning was spent on a United Way allocation panel, helping divvy up the local UW’s campaign funds to various area organizations. It was equally rewarding (giving away money!) and frustrating (giving away too little money), but definitely confirmed my eagerness to help run the College’s United Way campaign again next fall.

Thursday was divided into a rush-rush morning at work, getting all kinds of stuff done, and a tough but fun four-hour bike ride in the afternoon – my hardest ride yet this year, and a key session on the way to the Almanzo 100 race on May 14 – two weeks from today. Conditions were borderline terrible, which only made the 240 minutes in the saddle that much better.

Even given the quality of previous five days, I had high expectations for Friday, and I wasn’t disappointed. I spent all morning at the Minnesota Zoo, chaperoning Julia’s first-grade field trip. I spent pretty much the whole time with Julia and her hilarious best friend, which was absolutely great. After a week of rain and gray, we actually had good weather, and we took advantage, hitting all of the zoo’s high points and enjoying each other’s company.

After a couple quick hours at work that afternoon, I collected both girls at home and went to a great art fair at the Northfield High School, where we had pizza and circulated among the amazing arts and crafts stations set up all over the school. We made a bunch of art, tried out some musical instruments (Julia liked the cello, Vivi – unsurprisingly – liked the drums), and people-watched. Separately, each girl shyly pointed out a high-school age boy that she thought was “handsome” – funny and mildly shocking.

Then finally, today, we went to Rochester to visit with friends there. The girls enjoyed the trip and the visit, and we got back in time for me to sneak in a short ride while Shannon and the girls assembled May baskets to distribute to friends on Sunday. The day was capped with a good dinner, a beer, and a video. I know they can’t all be this good, but it’s nice to have an such a good one every now and then.

Tapir Story

Inspired by a friend, my recent trip to the zoo, and this picture.

Riding a Tapir

When the little girl came up to the pen where the tapir was lounging, he sensed something different about her – something free, something adventurous. He raised his vaguely equine head and fixed one black eye on her. Unlike so many others who came to the zoo, she didn’t shrink back from his snaggly tooth or his overripe scent. Instead, she smiled and reached through the pen’s fencing to pet the bristly hair on his neck. Rising to his stubby legs, he raised his snouts and showed his teeth, sniffing at the girl through the fence. The small animal that was attached to one of her hands calmly sniffed him back. Both the girl and the creature smelled good.

The girl glanced away. Following her eyes, the tapir saw three humans – a tall man, a shorter woman, and an even smaller boy – far down the walkway, admiring those idiotic gibbons. Sniffing, he could tell the humans shared a scent with the girl. She probably belonged to them.

The tapir’s heart sank. He knew she’d soon have to leave and go with them, just like all the other humans who had, too infrequently, lingered at his pen. Wrinkling his nose again, he inhaled her scent one last time.

But no: the girl didn’t move away now. Instead, she reached out with one pink, hairless hand and did something noisy to the part of the fence where the keeper came in with buckets full of leaves and fruit and grass. The fence groaned and moved out of the way.

Instinctively, the tapir moved over to the spot where the fence had been. Holding her little creature still with one hand, the girl patted her leg with the other. Her mouth made sounds – “C’mere, boy! That’s good! C’mere!” Tentatively, the tapir pushed his head past the fence, sniffing. It seemed okay. He stepped over the barrier with his front legs, sniffed again. Still okay. Moving further through the opening, his wide midsection almost got stuck, but he grunted and pushed through, where the girl met him with a big smile. She patted him between the eyes. “Good boy!”

What now, though? The tapir didn’t know, but before he could think about it, the girl had put her little creature on the tapir’s back and then, amazingly, climbed up too! The tapir could feel her hands clenched in the hair of his neck and her little hoofs touching his ribs, gently. “C’mon, boy! Let’s go!” The tapir slowly began to walk away from the pen. Ahead of him, not far away, he could see a bright green area. Trotting as he’d once down down jungle paths, he smelled clean fresh air outside, and the unmistakable scent of running water.

Moving now as fast as he could, past some small groups of humans, he suddenly left the place of his pen. His hoofs touched something that felt a bit like the jungle. Above and behind his head, the girl made another, louder sound, “Yee haw!” Inspired, the tapir headed for a nearby stand of trees. He was free and he had a friend.

Dipsea

Today I read a story in a Runner’s World special issue (unfortunately not online, though excerpted here, and not unlike this other RW story on the race) about the Dipsea Race, a 7.5 mile trail race every June in Marin County, California, from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach – up and down and up and down and up and down the hills between that town and the ocean. The route sounds like it makes for a phenomenal run, and an even better race, thanks to a unique handicap start system that, in 2010, saw an 8-year-old girl and a 68-year-old woman vie to be the first one across the finish line. The little girl won!

I’m adding either the run or, better, the race to my list of must-do athletic endeavors. A great video on it: