Sheridamn, Whyomin

On the first leg of our road trip to the Fat Pursuit, Ben Doom and I made it as far as Sheridan, Wyoming – 815 miles from Northfield (925 from St. Cloud, from which Ben started, heading down to pick my sorry ass up). We have 340 to go!

Having just done most of this drive this summer on our family vacation to the Black  Hills, I didn’t pay much attention till we crossed the Missouri River. Soon afterwards, the sun set – which seemed to take hours and hours. Before we reached Rapid City, though, we were traveling in full big-sky darkness. Even with high-beam headlights in front of me, the stars were distractingly bright. I can’t wait to see them again on Friday and Saturday nights from the seat of my bike.

After Rapid City, the country and the road emptied out. We hit the Wyoming state line, goggled at the massive coal mine power plant outside Gillette, paused for snacks when we hit that city, and then pushed on to Sheridan. 

The 80 miles between Gillette and Sheridan were empty. I usually think that I grew up in a pretty sparsely-settled place, but that stretch reminded me that the U.P. is Manhattan compared to Wyoming. In the time we needed to get from Gillette to Sheridan, we shared westbound I-90 with only three other vehicles: a filthy pickup truck that blasted past us at 90 mph right after Gillette, a dumpy compact car that popped up in front of us from some remote on-ramp, and an old Chevy truck that lumbering along in the passing lane. Even this bit of I-90 will seem heavily trafficked compared to the overnight trails at the race. Again, I can’t wait.

The Caldera Are Calling and I Must Go

A person can find all types of treasure, trinkets, and trash bearing John Muir’s famous line, “The mountains are calling and I must go,” which he originally wrote in a letter to his sister.

I don’t know what Muir thought of Yellowstone and the Tetons, but I bet he’d have found the Island Park area interesting: like Yellowstone, it’s got a fascinating geological history. For instance, Big Spring, near the northern end of Island Park, is indeed a big spring – one of the biggest in the world – and gives rise to Henry’s Fork of the Snake River.

More dramatically, the entire area occupies the floor of two nested caldera – collapsed volcanoes. The larger Island Park caldera is about the same size as the Yellowstone caldera, part of the supervolcano that – as the Onion jokes –  could choose to blow at any minute.

The Henry’s Fork and Island Park Calderas

Of course this relates to fatbiking! The Fat Pursuit course skirts the aligned western rims of the Island Park and smaller Henry’s Fork calderas, then runs south to the spot where the Henry’s Fork river drops off the edge of the caldera, forming the two Mesa Falls on its way to the Snake River. The course winds toward the eastern side of the Henry’s Fork caldera, climbing along its edge before dropping back down away from the rim to our first checkpoint. There the course starts to run north, climbing out of the Henry’s Fork again and then out of the Island Park caldera too on the way to our second checkpoint. Later, after the third checkpoint, the course bumps up and over the the rims again, just a few miles from the finish.

I doubt I’ll have the wherewithal (or the daylight) to notice these various encounters with the race’s geology, not maybe I can pick a few of the details up on the drive to the start in Thursday. And I’ll certainly hope that the super volcano doesn’t erupt while I’m riding in the race. That would almost certainly melt my bike and prevent me from racing the way I’d like.

 

New Year, Same Obsession

One week into the new year, I hope to be finishing my third try at the Fat Pursuit fatbike race in eastern Idaho, just over the border from Yellowstone National Park. I’ve raced the Fat Pursuit twice before, both times at the 200 kilometer (126 mile) distance: I only made it to mile 100 in 2014 before I had to quit, but the next year, I finished the race in 26 hours, 25 minutes.

This year, I am trying the 200 mile race, which was run for the first time last year. Only seven men finished, out of 24 starters (21 men, 3 women). In addition to being run entirely at altitude (6,000 feet and up), and of course being 200 miles long, the big race includes a colossal amount of climbing – something on the order of 10,000 feet. Last year’s winner was the only guy to finish under 30 hours; everyone else was over 40 hours – and two guys needed more than 50 hours to finish.

All of that only makes me more eager to get to the start line for a race that goes through country this beautiful:

I’m not overstating things by saying that I’ve been training and preparing for the Fat Pursuit for a year, starting with my successful winter ultramarathons last January. I did more racing in 2016 than I ever have before: four winter races and six dryland races totaling 92 hours of riding – a pretty solid hit of race experience.

The races contributed to the 361 hours of training I logged in 2016, across 271 discrete sessions – training rides, races, gym workouts. I only eked out 2,000 miles of riding this year, but it was pretty high-quality riding, I think, and I did a good chunk of it in the last three months, building toward the Fat Pursuit. (I’m a little annoyed with myself that I only realized on New Year’s Eve that I had nearly averaged an hour of working out a day! Had I realized I was so close even a week earlier, I could have easily done a few more longer workouts to hit that completely meaningless goal.)

Given all that training (and racing)  in 2016, I feel pretty ready to start the 200-mile Fat Pursuit on Friday, January 6, 2017. The one variable that I can’t really prepare to handle is the altitude, though I have done tons of intensity training which I hope will pay off in processing that thin mountain air! I have spent a lot of time tuning my fatbike, the Buffalo, including a crucial switch to a smaller chainring to handle the race’s climbing. I’ve also been obsessing over clothing and gear, including the mandatory survival gear that everyone has to carry – and use. I’m looking forward to seeing my “fatbike family” out there, too – the men and women with whom I’ve raced bikes at events like this and the Arrowhead over the last four winters. With four days till the race, I think I’m ready.

Night Ride 

With the Fat Pursuit and the Arrowhead rapidly approaching (70 days and 94 days away, respectively), I’ve been feeling the need to get out for some long rides. So far this fall, though, a heavy workload at the office and plenty of activities at home have made all-day outings impossible, so Friday I did the next best thing by going out after dinner for a few hours on the gravel roads.

Riding gravel roads in the dark is wonderful, especially on an unseasonable night like Friday – 60° F, an insistent but not harsh westerly breeze, a touch of humidity. I left home just as the sun set behind me, calling out for a picture or two. A stop to adjust my seat height – when did I acquire the unwelcome ability to feel that my saddle is too high or low based on the shorts I’m wearing? – and tweak the angle of some new grips. 


Soon afterwards, I was in full dark, riding toward the white spot of road illuminated by my headlight. First more east, waving to a cyclist hiding behind his own headlight as he headed back toward town. Then some south paralleling the county line, waving to the cars and trucks I met, dropping into low spots where cool wet air had pooled, climbing up to ridges where the breeze warmed me. All around, I could see yellow, white, red lights at dozens of farms. Interior lights spilling through picture windows. A bonfire, the smoke almost more felt than smelled. 

A turn to the west onto pavement for a passage through a tiny farm town, dark but loud with machinery at the grain elevator. 


Then back onto gravel, passing the state park and the first deer, timidly watching from the trees from the far side of the ditch. A cat, sitting by a mailbox post. An easy downhill curve that the darkness turned into a mountain pass. A slow, tentative lap around the MTB trails at the county park – tricky to ride with only the headlight and a fading headlamp. Stopped at the high point, I could hears cows lowing, horses neighing, dogs barking, coyotes yipping. The night was really alive. Back on the bike, I found Gut Check Bridge downright scary: wet, banked, downhill. 


After the park, one last westerly section, then northeast up a long, steady climb through a gorgeous stand of hardwoods. Some unseen dogs yapping angrily at me. More deer. Legs burning now from the gym at noon, from 2.5 hours of riding, from an empty stomach. 

North now, back toward town. The last big climb, past a dead deer, gnawed open by night creatures. Another cat, darting away. The rollers on the straight drag back to the city limits. A combine crawling through a cornfield toward two tractor-trailers waiting for its load. The last stretch of gravel, up a hill now crowned with a new tract house, light pouring from every window, people moving around inside. Five minutes later, back inside my own house to stay up too late, buzzing with endorphins and looking forward to the next night ride. 

Sweaty Fun at the Red Wing Classic 

What: the Red Wing Classic race, event #4 in the Minnesota Mountain Bike Series


Where: the Memorial Park trails above Red Wing, MN

When: July 10, 2016

Why: To try a “short” mountain bike race! I decided to enter the “comp” class to get the most time out there – three laps of a decently tough 6.1 mile course. 

Who: my Salsa El Mariachi, the Coyote.

My best gear was my tire setup: Bontrager XR2s, tubeless. Good stuff. 

My worst gear was my sense of balance, which betrayed me on a tricky off-camber turn early in lap 1, causing a bad crash that screwed up my right hand for a while. 

The low points were

  1. when I crashed,
  2. when I got so badly dehydrated on lap 1 that I started seeing stars, which were only chased off by pounding three cups of cold water, and 
  3. When I reached the infamous Stairway to Heaven climb on each lap, a steep, straight, rocky bastard. I had to walk it each time. 

The high point was when, on lap 3, I felt like my legs had come around and that I’d finally gotten a sense of the course. 

It was in the bag when I hit the top of the last climb and knew I had only a few hundred meters to go, finishing in 2:27 for 50th place – third from last and 44 minutes behind the winner. 

The key lesson learned was that going hard for 2 and a half hours is fun but totally different than racing a marathon. 

The takeaway is that these short races should be part of my “off-season” racing schedule. Many are pretty close to Northfield, all are inexpensive compared to marathons, and each (I learned) is quite different from the others. My lap times got longer through the race: 45:25 on lap 1, 49:58 on lap 2, and  52:15 on lap 3. Gotta get faster. 

Note: the photo above is by Todd Bauer, an excellent photographer who covers a lot of bike races! He published a great gallery of photos from the Red Wing Classic, including that shot of me

Marji Gesick 2016: 100% Effort, 49% Complete

What: the Marji Gesick 100

When: Saturday, September 26, 2016: 7:47 total riding time, about 9 hours total time on course.

Why: Because the MG is supposed to be one of the hardest MTB races in the Midwest, if not the country, with more than 10,000 feet of climbing over the 100-mile distance, and because I need to finish a 100-mile MTB race. I’m 0-3* lifetime!

Also, because I’d never raced in the homeland!

Where: Marquette to Ishpeming, Michigan – in the center of the gorgeous Upper Peninsula. Our drive up to the race took me through some old stomping grounds and directly past my Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Channing. This is a fire tower outside Crystal Falls, not their house. 

The course was mostly singletrack in the woods – always demanding and often relentlessly technical. Though there was plenty of fast, fun trail


and lots of hike-bike for me and others.


Who: The Coyote, my Salsa El Mariachi 29er hardtail.

Best gear: My front shock and my Bontrager XR2 tires, run tubeless at about 20 psi.

Worst gear: My rear derailleur, which failed catastrophically at mile 53.

The high point was when I realized at about mile 50 that I felt about as good as I’d ever felt near the midpoint of a long race. I was confident I had the legs and lungs to finish in 14-16 hours. 

The low point was when chain suck wrapped the derailleur around my cassette and neither I nor a fellow racer could fix it or switch the bike to singlespeed.

It was in the bag at no point in the race. It was on a pipe and in a tunnel at different moments in the event, though. 

The key lesson I learned was that I have the fitness for a long MTB race, and that my technical skills have improved enough that they’re no longer a liability (as they’d been at the 2015 Chequamegon 100). I just need to combine those qualities with a good day from the bike – or a different, more forgiving bike. It’s no surprise that virtually all the finishers rode full-suspension machines.

The takeaway is that the Marji Gesick is a great event run on a stupid hard course. I need to get back to there in 2017 and earn a finish like my friend Galen:

* My results in four attempts at century-length MTB races:

  • 2015 Chequamegon 100: switched midway to the 62-mile race, DNFing the 100.
  • 2015 Maah Daah Hey 100: quit at about mile 50 after the fatbike’s drivetrain blew up.
  • 2016 Chequamegon 100: completed the full course, which had been shortened to about 80 miles due to rain damage to the trails.
  • 2016 Marji Gesick 100: DNF at mile 54 with a mechanical.

Fat Pursuing

Today I registered for the Fat Pursuit, the fatbike race that Jay Petervary stages in eastern Idaho each winter. I was registrant number two for the long race – a 200 mile affair that starts on January 6.

After completing the 120-mile distance in 2015, I had to skip the race this year, which only stoked my fire to go back in 2017. Now the race is on the horizon again – 158 days away. It’s hard to overstate how much I’m excited to train, to prep my bike and gear, to travel out there, to see the mountains again, to hang out with race friends, and to ride those amazing trails on the Buffalo.

The Buffalo in its summer garb

A Good Winter’s Riding

My winter of racing ended with Saturday’s Fatbike Frozen Forty race at the Elm Creek trails in Champlin, Minnesota. I did this race in 2013 (my first-ever fatbike race) and in 2014, and found 40+ miles of snowy singletrack to be just a little beyond my abilities. This year I did the race as a relay with my friend Dan, who’s new to fatbiking but is a killer on the trails. Alternating our laps, we turned in some insanely consistent times: Dan did our first and third laps in 1:11.01 and 1:11.02 respectively; I did laps two and four in 1:11.48 and 1:10.39.Not bad, and good for third place out of 13 relay teams! We await our bronze medals.

With half as much riding to do at the race, I was able to enjoy the singletrack a lot more, and even to think, at points, that I am actually getting better at that kind of riding. I only had one serious spill, one of those Schrödinger’s crashes where you’re both vertical and horizontal at the same time. No damage to body, kit, or bike, so it was fine.

Apart from that, I managed to maintain a decent pace over what’s, to me, some very tricky trail: with plenty of tight corners and some off-camber climbs and descents. I even enjoyed Grizzland, the “advanced” back section of the Elm Creek trails, that I found, frankly, terrifying the last times I raced here. I’m not yet smooth as a singletrack rider, I did do a lot less of that herky-jerky riding where I smash the brakes and then accelerate. More flow, more go!

Altogether, I did five races this winter:

December 19: the Solstice Chase (26 miles) in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin

January 9-10: the Tuscobia (160 miles) in Rice Lake, Wisco

January 16: the Snow Crush (15 miles) in Faribault, Minnesota

January 25-26: the Arrowhead (135 miles) in northern Minnesota

February 13: the FFF (22 miles)

That averages out to be a race every 11 days, and 358 miles of racing! Not bad. Between my arbitrary first day of my winter training on September 1 and the FFF yesterday, I did 1,681 miles of riding (commuting, training, and racing), an average of 10 miles a day.

Spring, summer, and fall 2016 will be quite a bit quieter than the last eight weeks. I’m only planning to do four races before October. Perhaps most, I’m looking forward to trying to finish two mountain bike races that I didn’t last year: the Cheq 100 in northern Wisconsin in June and the Maah Daah Hey 100 in the Badlands of North Dakota in August. In September, I’ll do the fifth and last running of the Inspiration 100 gravel race in Garfield, Minnesota, and then the Marji Gesick 100 mountain-bike race in the Upper Peninsula – a new race for me, and probably the toughest of the four. But hell, I have 222 days to train, and a still-new-to-me Salsa El Mariachi MTB to train and race on!

Then the winter will come around again. I am already excited to travel out west again to try Jay P’s Fat Pursuit in Idaho in early January, tackling the new 200-mile option. I’ll also do the Arrowhead 135 again in late January, and I’m jazzed about a new “unsupported” way to race the event, as announced yesterday by the race directors:

How do you make one of the toughest races on earth harder?? We will offer the option to race totally self supported for prior Arrowhead finishers or those with prior approval from Race Director. Unsupported racers will check in at checkpoints but will not be allowed food, water, or time to warm up at checkpoints. Unsupported racers will receive a unique finisher award.

Our vision is that an unsupported racer leaves International Falls and gets no help and stays outside until the finish line. No purchases, no Melgeorge drop bag, no hotel, no food or water from other racers (emergencies would be the exception.) Just stop at checkpoints long enough to register.

Sounds like a good challenge!

Arrowheadata

With this year’s Arrowhead now complete, I’ve crunched some numbers.

In my view, the big story of the race is Tracey Petervary’s third straight win. With the three-peat, T-race is now the winningest Arrowhead bike racer, female or male. Her winning times have ranged from 27:22 in 2014 (the cold year) to 18:27 last year – just 9 minutes off Eszter Horanyi’s women’s record (2012). (John Storkamp has three wins on foot.)

On the men’s side, Jay Petervary’s win places him alongside Dave Pramann (2006, 2008) and Jeff Oatley (2010, 2011) as two-time champions.

The 2017 race could be interesting simply as a chance to see if any of those three riders can win for a third time or if other one-time winners like Jorden Wakeley (2015), Kevin Breitenbach (2012), or Todd McFadden (2013) can win again. (Sarah Lowell [2007, 2008] and Alicia Hudelson [2012, 2014] both have won twice on foot, and Jim Reed appears to be the only person to have won the race in two disciplines – ski in 2010 and foot this year.)

Here’s a spreadsheet on all of the AH winners: https://goo.gl/lkam5Z

Obsessing a bit about ways that I can get faster, I ran some simple analyses of bike finishers the last two years, basically tabulating the time taken to ride the four legs of the race (start to Gateway, Gateway to Melgeorges, Melgeorges to Skipulk, Skipulk to finish) and time spent at the checkpoints.

The two takeaways are stupidly and slightly less stupidly obvious: first, the fastest racers go fast on the course, and second, the fastest racers spend very little time at the checkpoints.

While the top five men all did the first leg, to Gateway, this year in less than four hours, only Jay Petervary, Will Ross (2nd man), and Dan Dittmer (3rd man) did the second leg of the race in under five hours (4:13, 4:16, and 4:44, respectively), and only Petervary (5:33) and Ross (5:44) did the third leg to Skipulk in under six. (Dittmer was next closest, at 6:25). The flat fourth leg saw a huge accordion effect, with fifteen racers going under four hours, including Ross at 2:52 (the only person to cover that leg in under three hours) and Jill Martindale (2nd woman) doing it in 3:41.

Fast on the bike, fast off it: Plenty of folks – including most of the men’s top 10 finishers and Martindale – didn’t stop at Gateway at all. (Like several others, Tracey Petervary stopped for only a minute). At Melgeorges, only Jay Petervary, Will Ross (2nd man), and Ben Doom (4th man) spent less than 10 minutes refueling. Eight men spent less than 10 minutes at the luxury of Skipulk, led by Dittmer at 2:00, Petervary at 3:00, and Doom and Pat Adrian (6th man) at 5:00. All told, Jay Petervary spent just 6:00 at checkpoints (about three seconds per race mile!), while Ross spent 12:00 – more than accounting for his three minute gap behind Petervary at the finish. Only seven racers – including Jill Martindale – kept their total stops to under an hour.

Too long, didn’t read? Ride fast, stop quick.

Here’s the full spreadsheet of data for this year’s race, which can be sorted as you might like: https://goo.gl/AZmKJE

For the hell of it, here’s the data for 2015 too: https://goo.gl/oet9TK

Arrowhead Race Report – Arrowhead III: Revenge of the Snows

I was lucky to have Salsa Cycles publish my Arrowhead 135 race report on their “Culture” blog!

Arrowhead III: Revenge of the Snows

They wove in a bunch of my own photos as well as some much better shots taken by Mike Riemer from Salsa, like this one.

Early On (Photo by Mike Riemer)
Early On (Photo by Mike Riemer)

13.5 Quick Thoughts on the Arrowhead

The Arrowhead Trail, near Kabetogama Lake
The Arrowhead Trail, near Kabetogama Lake

1. It’s an outrageous, unearned privilege to be able to do a race like the Arrowhead. I can’t think about this fact too much or I’ll start dehydrating through my tear ducts.

2. When the winner of the race says, “It was the hardest conditions I have ridden in with such an intense pace,” it must have been a damn hard race.

3. There must be a time and a place for margarita-flavored Shot Bloks, but the Arrowhead is neither. #yuck

4. On the other hand, sliced salami is a delicious and nutritious race snack at any time!

5. Next year I’m not sharing my Red Bulls with anyone! I need that crap. It’s magical.

6. I’m sure some egghead can explain the fancy science behind ibuprofen, but that crap, too, is magical.

7. I love the “racer against the trail” feeling I get leaving Melgeorges (checkpoint two, at mile 72) to tackle the hardest section of the course.

8. I’m almost happier to reach the last checkpoint – Skipulk at mile 111 – than the finish, because if you can get there, you only have 24 miles to go. The finish is more a relief than anything.

9. I think that with more and better training, I have a real shot at a top-ten finish next year.

10.Some carbon rims would help, cough cough.

11. I also need to cut my time at the checkpoints down to under an hour, total. That’s what fast racers do. (Wearing a wristwatch and starting the timer each time I hit a checkpoint was a good reminder to keep my stays short.)

12. Riding bikes often humbles me, but watching Tracey Petervary and Jill Martindale ride away from me in the last leg of the race was humbling, awe-inspiring, and motivating. I couldn’t hold either of their wheels, but my weak attempts to chase first T-Race (who won) and then Jill (who finished second) did speed up those endless straightaways after Skipulk.

13. It’s a question as to which racer was tougher this year: Mike Brumbaugh, who skied twenty miles after breaking a ski pole and then finished the race after using PVC pipe and strapping tape to fix the pole; Jim Wilson, who was the last biker to finish, in 55:28; or Sveta Vold, who was the third-place female biker and who stopped during the race to nurse her new baby and pump milk!

13.5. Hungry.

Arrowhead Clothes

I get several recurring questions about fatbike riding:
"Do you get cold?"
"What do you think about?"
"What do you eat?"
"What do you wear?"

The questions interlock: I do get cold, sure, but not usually that cold, in part because I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I’m cold or hot and adjusting accordingly. I also spend a lot of time thinking about eating and drinking, and of course actually eating and drinking. And when I get everything just right, I don’t have to think about being cold or hot because I’ve chosen the right clothes, and can think about the race itself, about conditions on the trail, about the state of my body and mind, about other racers, et cetera ad infinitum.

I’ve already thought a lot about the race-day weather. Conditions at this year’s Arrowhead look to be similar to last year’s – around 20°F – though we might get a little snow this time. Given this straightforward situation, I’m going with a very reliable set of clothes that I’ve used in other races and long rides, stuff that keeps me warm and, as important, dry but that is also comfortable and easy to adjust as needed. After I put this clothing on around 6 on Monday morning, I hope I don’t have to think about it again till I’m done!

Layers are key from top to bottom, because they help manage moisture – preventing excessive sweating that could lead to dehydration or, worse, frostbite. In pursuing layering nirvana, I have not chosen much cycling-specific clothing. In fact, only the boots are something I couldn’t wear for any other outdoor winter activity.
Full Kit

The boots are 45NRTH’s Wolvhammer cycling boots – sturdy, warm shitkickers that clip into my pedals. Inside, I wear compression socks inside thin wool socks. (If I expected colder temps I’d wear thicker outer socks.)
Feet

On my legs, I wear thermal windbriefs, fairly lightweight Craft baselayer bottoms (super long so they stay tucked into my socks), and an old but wonderful pair of fleece-lined Craft skiing tights. I’ve never had cold legs, so I know this combination works.
Legs

On my trunk, I often wear a thin wicking undershirt under a long-sleeved but lightweight Craft baselayer shirt (the match to the longjohns). I may forego the undershirt this year as it’s too effective an insulator for 20° weather. I wear fairly thin fleece gloves, as I usually have my hands buried in the big overmitts called "pogies" that are fixed to my handlebars. I carry several pairs of gloves to have options if one pair gets sweaty or if the temperature fluctuates. (At the halfway checkpoint this year, I plan to change into a completely fresh set of baselayer items: both pairs of socks, windbriefs, long bottoms and top.)

Trunk and Arms
My outer layer is a soft shell jacket by Eddie Bauer’s "First Ascent" line. It’s a fantastic piece of clothing: close fitting but very stretchy, with two deep side pockets and a deep chest pocket, a full zipper, and a huge hood that, pulled up, protects the neck and even my lower face. I also wear a very lightweight reflective vest, to comply with race rules that mandate a certain amount of reflective material – the better for other racers and especially snowmobilers to see you.

Head
Keeping my head warm but not sweaty is a challenge. I usually carry two or three different hats so that I can change out of a sweaty one or into a warmer one. The jacket’s hood is a secret weapon here. I always wear some sort of eye protection – usually clear-lensed cycling glasses, though I carry regular cycling sunglasses too, because even an overcast day can be damn bright on the snow. I wear a headlamp all night so that I can see and be seen, but also in the hours before and after dark when I need to be seen in tricky flat light. Fatbike races typically don’t require racers to wear helmets, so I forego that too, which makes regulating my head temperature a lot easier.

Though all this stuff is expensive, it’s all very effective at keeping me warm and dry and therefore safe. And I’m inordinately proud of the fact that I didn’t pay full retail for a single one of these items, except the boots, which I bought with a bonus a couple years ago.

Tuscobiawesome

Last weekend, I finished the Tuscobia Winter Ultramarathon along the Tuscobia State Trail in northwestern Wisconsin – my fifth winter ultramarathon. I placed 12th out of 29 finishers (25 men and 4 women) in a time of 23:38. I had a great, brutal, wonderful time riding my bike in the woods.

I’d been looking forward to Tuscobia for a while, having heard from other fatbikers that it’s low-key, well run, and straightforward. Many other racers use it to tune up for the Arrowhead 135, always held three or four weeks later. I hadn’t ever done that, but when I decided last fall that I couldn’t spend the time or money to go out to Idaho to race the Fat Pursuit again, I was pretty happy to be able to register for the Tuscobia instead.

In two ways, the 2016 race was a new event. For the first time, the full-distance race ran from Rice Lake to Park Falls and back (rather than from P.F. to R.L. and back). With the start/finish in Rice Lake, the course was lengthened by four miles at each end to take advantage of a flat, straight four-mile spur trail connecting Rice Lake to the Tuscobia trail. Race HQ was a no-nonsense community building with a back yard abutting that spur.

I rode that spur trail the day before the race, getting a sense of snow conditions and stretching my legs midway through a very pleasant day of travel and prep. The mandatory gear check that afternoon felt pretty casual, perhaps because I’d done gear checks four previous times. Some of the rookies looked awfully nervous as race officials scrutinized their required gear. I tried to stay relaxed by chatting with other racers, drinking water, and thinking about my race strategy. I was aiming for an 18 hour finish, but I was prepared for a 24 hour ride.

Gear: checked
Gear: checked

After passing the gear check, I had a quick dinner with my friend Ben, attended the race meeting to pick up any last-minute intelligence on the course (such as a warning about a dangerous spot on the trail), and then went back to the hotel to pack my bike, which as luck would have it I could do while hanging out with Ben.

Six hours of restless sleep – full of nervous dreams about racing and especially about missing the start of the race – ended at 4 a.m. I dressed, nibbled on some high-calorie food, and got myself over to the start in plenty of time to finish some last-minute tasks like attaching my sleeping bag and pad (both mandatory pieces of gear). I couldn’t fit my bike into my rental car when fully assembled, see! As always, I got a little bit high from the way the Buffalo looks when ready for a race:

Ready to Roll
Ready to Roll

Just before 6:00 a.m., the 44 bikers tackling the full 160-mile distance formed up outside in the starting area. My thermometer showed the temperature as being 10° F, which is pretty much an ideal race temp. After a few more words from the race director, we were let loose with a hearty shout of “Go!”

Over the four-mile run north out of Rice Lake to the Tuscobia State trail, the pace increased from easy to manageable to fast, but I hovered around tenth place, near enough to see the leader if I stood on my pedals. I relished finally racing: the squeak of tires on the snow, the breathing of other racers, occasional calls as one person passed another, the warm yellow glow of headlights and the unpleasant red blinking of tail lights – by rule, two on the back of every bike.

When we made the right-hand turn that took us over a highway and onto the Tuscobia trail proper, the speed went through the roof, stretching and then breaking the line of racers. I monitored my speed on my computer so that I didn’t get sucked into chasing racers that I’d never catch. Soon enough the leaders came back to me and we traveled along together for a few more miles.

As we headed east, my sleeping pad started to slide upwards, catching the bottom half of my headlight’s beam and reflecting the light back at me in an irritating way. Too, the tire pressure that had served me well over the first 5 or 10 miles was proving too hard for the softer, less heavily ridden snow that we were now on. Earlier than I would have liked, I pulled aside to adjust the pad (folding it in half and strapping it further down) and let quite a bit of air out of my tires. Though as always I second-guessed the new pressure with pretty much every pedal stroke for the next few miles, it turned out to be just right; I didn’t have to tweak it again.

Back on the bike, I could see the sun gradually illuminating the sky in front of me – or at least what of the gray sky I could see above the near-tunnel of trees. Around then, another racer caught up to me – Tom E., a guy with whom I had shared a table at the gear check. We said our hellos and decided without really deciding to ride together for a while, trying to find the right lines in the softer snow. We’d spend the next 22 hours within ten feet of each other, sharing the race and the experience.

Racers say of the Tuscobia that the trail is flat and straight, which some complain is “boring” – a quality that’s amplified, for some, by the unusual out-and-back format. You see everything twice, and “everything” is pretty much just a straightaway through the trees.

The Trail at 9:41 a.m.
The Trail at 9:41 a.m.

I’m a big believer in the grandmotherly maxim that only boring people get bored, so I’d been looking forward to this “boring” quality of the trail. I love out-and-back courses, and do quite a bit of training on them, enjoying the way they turn this uphill into the downhill, or that left-hander into this right-hander, or flip-flop the scenery so the big red barn that was on the left going out is on the right coming back. Very simple pleasures.

The Tuscobia was no different. Talking with Tom about this and that and the other thing, I soaked up the view in front of us, occasionally glancing to the sides if we passed over a river or through a swamp or crossed a highway. The low ridges of snow along the edges of roads were nearly the only bike-handling challenges. The landscape was very much like the low rolling woods in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where I grew up, or in northern Minnesota, where the Arrowhead is held – and very unlike the spectacular mountain forests in the Idaho of the Fat Pursuit course. I loved it all, even the little towns that were usually nothing more than a convenience store, a bar, and a few houses: Brill, Birchwood, Wooddale, Couderay, Radisson, Ojibwa. These names seemed familiar, akin the names of little towns elsewhere in the state that my family drove through on the way from the U.P. to Minneapolis or Green Bay.

The race’s first checkpoint was just past Ojibwa, an old stone cabin in a city park. The ride from the Ojibwa city limits sign to the park seemed painfully long, but we hit the checkpoint just before 11 – five hours and 45 miles into the race. At that 9 mph pace, we’d finish in about 18 hours – my target time.

At Checkpoint 1 (11:00 a.m.)
At Checkpoint 1 (11:00 a.m.)

Though we didn’t have a real plan for the checkpoint, Tom and I were pretty efficient at Ojibwa: checking in with the timekeeper, drying wet clothes in front of the fireplace. I melted off the day’s first icebeard so that I could eat and drink better. Soon enough, we were good to go, and checked out after 40 minutes inside. Tom started back toward the trail, then nearly took a wrong turn onto the driveway that led from the park to the highway. Calling to him, I led us back to our trail, laughing as explained that he’s just too used to riding on the road.

The leg from Ojibwa to the turnaround checkpoint in Park Falls was 34 miles, a solid ride under any circumstances and tougher thanks to an insistent headwind and a steady increase in elevation – nothing alpine, for sure, but plenty of false flats. Just after the checkpoint, we passed through more little towns – Winter, Loretta, Draper – before the emptiest part of the ride, a big, silent expanse of state forest interrupted only a few creek crossings and a bit of riding next to the highway. The snow thinned, and we even rode on short stretches of gravel here and there.

As we pedaled, Tom and I chatted. He talked about his experiences as a long-distance road rider, doing brevet rides of 300 and 600 and 1200 kilometers, including the famous Paris-Brest-Paris randonnée that’s held every four years in France. He also told me about his ride over the summer of the full Tuscobia trail, which gave him a nice sense of where we were and what we were approaching. Usually riding in file, we occasionally rode side by side and stopped about once an hour to eat something, adjust our clothes, or take a leak. I took every chance to stretch my back, which was tightening up as we rode, paining me especially on uphills.

What was new was race traffic. First, bikers doing the 80-mile half-distance race came through. The fast guys zoomed by while middle-the-pack riders approached more slowly, traveling more at our pace, and exchanged friendly calls and waves. Then the runners started coming, endlessly, pulling their sleds. Some were actually running, most were walking energetically, and a few were barely moving, even though they were only a third of the way into their races. We even met a couple skiers, who were standing at the bottom of one of the course’s only hills, waving their poles and cheering madly for those of us going in the other direction. Mixed into the short-event racers were the leaders of the 160-mile bike race. They appeared up the trail, closed on us with shocking speed, and then whooshed past. I waved to my friend Ben, riding alone in second position, and greeted the other guys in the top 5 or 10 as they came by in a small group.

The race traffic thinned again as we approached Park Falls. I knew from my cue sheets and from common sense that we’d start crossing roads more frequently as we neared Park Falls, but dammit, not all the roads were signed where we crossed them, or they had a name that didn’t jibe with my cues. Still, my computer told me that we were getting close: 75 miles. 75.5 miles. 76. 76.5. Where the hell was that town? We saw the silvery water tower, which then disappeared as the trail curved. Finally, we could see something that wasn’t trail ahead of us – a trailhead sign! We sped up and popped out with relief onto the city streets. A few turns later, we pulled in at the checkpoint, a Catholic school which had given its cafeteria over to the race. I leaned the Buffalo up against the wall to unpack some stuff I’d need inside: an energy drink, a change of clothes, fresh batteries for my headlamp.

At Checkpoint 2 (4:01 p.m.)
At Checkpoint 2 (4:01 p.m.)

By no means plush, the cafeteria was comfortable – too much so, it turned out. Amazingly and (in retrospect) dismayingly, Tom and I spent a full 80 minutes there – eating soup and pasta and grilled cheeses, resting our legs and stretching my back, drinking soda and coffee, chatting too much with each other and with other racers (including my friend Mark S.), changing our wet clothes, swapping new batteries into my lamp. It felt great to put on fresh, dry clothes and to see that my headlamp would be nice and bright when the sun went down again, but had I been watching the clock, I would have tried to get us, or at least myself, moving sooner than we did. Lesson learned, at least for the next race.

We finally headed back out at 5:20, with the sun already gone. I got a little thrill from seeing that we would be riding in the dark again – “already,” it seemed. Riding the Buffalo in the dark is one of my favorite things, and here I was, literally in the middle of a big race, about to do just that thing for another 10 or 12 hours.

Weaving over the streets back to the trail, I checked my thermometer. As forecasted, the temperature had dropped all day, and was now at a nice round zero. I’d put on thicker layers inside, so I felt ready for that temp, and for the even colder temps that we’d have overnight – all the way down to minus 10 or 15.

When we hit the trail, I couldn’t help myself, and stomped on the pedals. I wanted to go. Behind me, I could sense Tom’s headlight fading, and then he called for me to sit up, not ready yet to go so fast. With 80 miles to go, I was okay with that, so I pulled back a little. This yo-yo’ing occurred on and off throughout the rest of the race, but I was fine with going at about 80% of my maximum. We had a long way to go, riding with someone – especially overnight – is nice, and making the race take longer would, I hope, have a good effect on fitness for the Arrowhead.

The trail was the same, but different. What had been on the left was on the right. What had been steady uphills were now steady downhills. Or, no, wait. They weren’t downhills. They’d somehow become regular flats. Signs we had read as we approached P.F. – like the ubiquitous ones reading “Dip” that marked literally every bit of uneven terrain – were now just silver shapes on posts, and ones that had been silver shapes were now legible. The trail mileage markers now counted down, though I had to remind myself to add four to each number to account for the spur back to Rice Lake.

The big difference was that the trail that had been lit by gray light all day was now a black tunnel – my favorite view, equal parts scary (what’s up there?) and comfortable (the trail is up there!). The abyssal blackness was punctured by our headlights, which lit up a nice cone to help stay in the track other racers had worn into the snow. I had decided at the halfway to use my Princeton Tec Apex headlamp rather than my handlebar-mounted headlights. The headlamp has a big sentimental value (I won it at the first Fat Pursuit), but I also like the way the beam, cast from my head rather the handlebars, lights up a wider patch of trail. And since the lamp is on my head, I can shine it off to the sides of the trail to light up that mountain lion that’s waiting to pounce. Oh, no, that’s just a snowy log. I think.

The black trail was also intermittently broken up by the blinking tail lights of a few runners whom we were now catching – some 160-milers and lots of 80-milers. In the blackness, the blinkies were visible from a mile away, which created many opportunities to chase, not that it’s difficult for a cyclist to catch someone walking. More difficult and more satisfying to catch was a group of four cyclists who had left Park Falls in the half hour before we did. We exchanged encouragement as we went by.

These spurts of motivation helped shorten the 34 miles from Park Falls back to the Objiwa checkpoint. Though Tom and I were hardly talking anymore – just a few words now and then about mileage or time – we still stopped a couple times to have a snack and a drink and adjust clothes. I tried to work my back loose, too, and needed both on and off the bike to shake my hands back to life. Thanks to the cold and a recent tweak of my handlebar position, my palms and pinkies kept falling asleep. I pondered how to correct this for the Arrowhead.

We couldn’t quite reach Ojibwa in one push, deciding out of hunger and thirst and tiredness to swing off the trail in the little town of Winter (aptly named!) for some nourishment at the gas station there. I leaned the Buffalo up against three massive ice cooler and went inside to let my stomach identify its needs. My icebeard alarmed the clerks who gamely sold me some orange juice, which looked so incredibly good in the cooler and tasted even better. The two skiers who’d earlier cheered madly for us were there too, having dropped out of the race. They liked my icebeard, and asked me to pose for a picture with them. I really want to see that picture.

Though I don’t think we stayed too long, we probably did stay too long before wheeling back out onto the trail, especially since Ojibwa was only five miles away – well under an hour of riding. The distance was wearing on us, and my thermometer was now showing five degrees below zero or so now, which meant for the first time meant that the air felt bracing, even unpleasant.

Within the hour, we came on the reflectors that marked the trail down to the checkpoint. I hadn’t taken a photo of the trail since my early-morning shot, so I paused as Tom headed in to take a murky picture of the trail leading on toward Rice Lake and the finish.

Entering Checkpoint 3 (9:44 p.m.)
Entering Checkpoint 3 (9:44 p.m.)

The Ojibwa checkpoint had been tidy and energizing when we hit it on the way out, but now, after about 12 hours of solid operation, the atmosphere was different. Racers and volunteers packed the place, first of all, with a group of French-Canadian runners occupying the prime spot in front of the fireplace. The food tables were in disarray, having been attacked by waves of racers since the morning, and the volunteers were working hard to supply everyone with soup, hot water, pancakes, oatmeal, and other warm stuff.

Inside Checkpoint 3 (10:50 p.m.)
Inside Checkpoint 3 (10:50 p.m.)

Tom and I chowed down and thawed out and bitched with less and less good nature about the fact that everyone seemed to be forgetting to close the cabin’s giant swinging door. I pulled hunks of ice out of my beard and tossed them into the fireplace. I did a round of back stretches in a bit of open space on the cold floor. We chatted a little bit with other racers about how things were going for them. Opinions were mixed. The lead woman looked disappointed as she messed with her tire. She headed out soon after we arrived, back to the race, I thought. I learned later that she’d dropped out. Gradually the crowd thinned and we realized that we needed to get moving too. We checked out, appallingly, after another 80 minutes of stoppage – the same amount of time we’d spent at Park Falls.

We rolled out just before 11 p.m., with the last 45 miles staring at us out of the dark woods. We knew that the leg to the finish would be tough, and we were pretty much silent, focusing on the effort we needed to make. We’d agreed again that we’d stop every hour or so to drink and eat, which I understood to mean that we would not stop anywhere else if we could help it.

I was in front, as usual, listening for Tom’s tires and watching for his lights behind me. I’d occasionally have to sit up to keep him close; at other times, we’d come up alongside me for a bit, joking a couple times about my tail lights’ obnoxious blinking. I could understand that, even as I was getting foggy from about 18 hours of work.

Surprisingly, the witching hour was not as empty as I’d expected it to be. Soon after Ojibwa, we passed the same group of four riders that we’d caught as we approached Winter. They were still traveling together, a nice little team that cheered as we went through. I was surprised that they didn’t stick to us, but within just a minute or two of catching them, they were behind us again, for good.

We didn’t find any other cyclists on the trail. Instead, we regularly came up on runners who were working their way back to Rice Lake too, including that group of French-Canadians, who took up all of the trail and only moved aside with sluggish surprise. They were a tired bunch. A few runners’ lights were turned off, or burned out, so we didn’t know they were there until we were almost literally on top of them. Moving without illumnination was strictly against the race rules, but what could we or they do?

Most of the time, we could see the runners from hundreds of yards behind thanks to their blinkies or their reflective vests. As fatigue settled into my brain, these spots of light started to play tricks. At one point, I saw a red ribbon hovering over the trail that turned out to be two pairs of blinkers on sleds behind two runners who were walking next to each other. At another place, my eyes told me that a car was parked on the trail. I could see the running lights! I knew it couldn’t be a car, and sure enough, the mirage turned out to have been created by solid red lights and reflective panels on the sleds of two runners who were standing at the edge of the trail.

I tried to call out encouragement to the other racers with a voice that was getting hoarse and slurred with tiredness and cold. I could feel a big icebeard growing on my face, and when I glanced down, I could see the rounded shapes of ice under my nose. I was having a hard time focusing on my cue sheet, too, but I knew we were approaching a railroad crossing that my friend Minnesota Mark, a very experienced ultramarathoner, had warned me about. Though the crossing had been a straightforward down-and-up bit in the daylight, I was a little worried about it in the dark. I didn’t want to hit the rails at the wrong angle and crash on them, to miss the noise and light of an approaching train and ride into its path, or – perhaps worse – to get stuck waiting for a train as it passed or idled. I focused whatever energy I had at that point on this tiny little bit of the race: looking and listening for a train, setting my bike straight down the trail so I’d cross the rails perpendicularly, plunging down the descent, getting up off the seat to ride over the rails as smoothly as possible, and then grunting up the other side. We stopped at the top of the incline for a drink and a snack and a photo of the ominous warning sign. 29 miles to go.

After the Lemington RR Crossing (1:22 a.m.)
After the Lemington RR Crossing (1:22 a.m.)

Those 29 miles are mostly lost to me. I remember not catching any more runners or riders. We were alone out there, pedaling down the trail at 7 or 8 mph – 9 if we were on a downhill. I remember watching the elevation reading on my computer, then trying to figure how many feet we still had to lose before Rice Lake. Of course, I couldn’t remember Rice Lake’s elevation( 1,148 feet), so I my arithmetic was futile, just something to occupy the brain. I remember needing to stop a few times to stretch my back, which was stubbornly tight, verging here and there on spasm. I remember talking now and again with Tom about the mile markers, and trying to remember to add the four extra miles to them so that I had an accurate distance to the finish. I remember being disturbed by how drunk I sounded when I tried to let Tom know that the roads we were crossing were clear of traffic. I remember my thermometer showing a temperature of minus 20. I remember seeing a SUV alongside the trail in one of the last towns on the trail, with a couple racers sitting in back. I remember a guy yelling and waving to us as we cruised through another town. I remember thinking that the bars and restaurants looked awfully sad at 2, 3, 4 in the morning. I remember at one point starting to weave from side to side on the trail, falling asleep on the bike. I stopped immediately to down a caffeinated gel, which chased the fatigue just enough to let me ride straight lines. I remember trying to calculate from the display on my GPS how many minutes we needed to go a mile, and failing.

Somehow my legs didn’t stop turning, and nothing on the Buffalo stopped working, and we covered the miles. I had to slow way down to negotiate the bumps along the highway that marked the end of the Tuscobia trail and the start of the spur trail to Rice Lake. Turning my handlebars to make that left turn felt monumental, but then we just had four miles. Tom was right behind me as we made this last push, jostling over the frequent road crossings. Finally, far far far ahead I could see a blinking light – a runner? a rider? No, a tail light on a sign at the finish line. The anticlimax was fitting: no banner, no clock, no spectators, not even a timekeeper. We rolled over the line at 5:41 a.m., leaned our bikes up against the wall of the community building, and went inside to announce ourselves to the two volunteers who were recording finishes.

The hall was full of racers, every one of them asleep in their sleeping bags. The indoor warmth and light made me feel nauseous. Before I started shivering violently, I let one of the volunteers take my picture, needing to record the icebeard:

Finisher Face (5:46 a.m.)
Finisher Face (5:46 a.m.)

Gradually I warmed up and stopped shivering. I might have had some water or a snack. When I felt reasonably whole, I said goodbye to Tom, whom I’d see soon at the Arrowhead, and rode my bike a few more yards back to the car. I managed to load the bike into the car without too much trouble and to drive the deserted streets back to my hotel. There I took a shower and a nap before meeting Ben – who’d finished second, in 15:47 – for breakfast. It had been an amazing 24 hours.

Finally, Riding on Snow

I’ve been lucky to be able to ride on snow every day since we came back from our Christmas trip to Moorhead. We arrived home on Monday about an hour before the forecasted snow arrived. About 24 hours of steady snowfall transformed the landscape and created some excellent riding conditions.

Monday night, a short jaunt through the local MTB trails.
Sechler in the Snowstorm

Tuesday, 7 hours and 58 miles of tough grinding on the snowy gravel, including some hike-a-bike and a couple crashes.
Oxford Mill Road, Cannon Falls

Big Woods State Park, Nerstrand

Wednesday, just a commute to work, but with a little extra riding for fun.
Locked Up

Thursday, New Year’s Eve, a nighttime ride on the MTB trails and a stop for cocoa when it was midnight in Amazonian Brazil.
Night Stop

Friday, New Year’s Day, a fun outing on some of the snowmobile trails outside of town.
Ride to the Sun

Hidden Trail

Saturday, after loading the bike with most of my race kit, another cruise on different snowmobile trails.
Northfield Township

Sunday, more of the same!?