Andrea

Ore to Shore Race Report

Hold on, I need to go get another beer…

OK, I’m back.

Yesterday was “sedate” enough that it doesn’t get its own post. Let’s just say my normal pre-race massage routine was replaced by going on a family trip to an iron mine/processing tour. After inhaling iron ore dust for an hour or two, we headed to Presque Isle and did a few leg-opening intervals to prep for the race.

Ore to Shore is a 48 mile point-to point that winds its way from Negaunee, MI to Marquette on gravel, pavement, and doubletrack. Because it’s mostly non-technical, and is more downhill than up, it’s FAST… like a miniature Leadville. The lead men finish in around 2 hours and 30 minutes. It’s also a very popular race. Rightly so- the payout is NICE. The men go 20 deep, and the women are paid equally for their top 5 spots. Because of those things, the field is stacked with strong road & mountain riders… and a lot of other riders:

field

We got to the start area early so that we could get a spot near the front. I’d applied for a “preferred start” position, but was denied, so we put our bikes in the “under 3 hours” seeding area. It kinda sucked not being able to ride around and warm up, but it was also nice to have the option of “saving” a spot near the front with your bike (some people had brought a backup bike or trainer for that very reason). After we did what we could to warm up (bodyweight squats, lunges, and various other dynamic stretching routines), we headed back to the corral to wait for the start.

start

We’d planned on working together, but once the race started, it ended up not working out that way. After the first few hills, Ryan was waiting up for me, and finally decided to just keep going. I don’t blame him… I was feeling great other than the hills. I’d generally rock the flats & downhills, but then I’d lose a place on the longer inclines. It sucked.

At one point, I was riding up one of the short/steep spots on one of the many doubletrack/powerline sections- it was sandy, rocky, and steep- when a guy who was pushing his bike stumbled and accidentally knocked me over. I was laying in the middle of the track, still halfway clipped in, when a guy riding up from the bottom started yelling at me to get off of the trail. I untangled myself from my bike, pushed to the top, and asked him if I was holding him up from getting 150th place or something. He didn’t have an answer.

There was also “Misery” hill. It was a steep, rocky, sandy, kinda long hill that everyone walked (I won’t call it “impossible” to ride, but I don’t know if riding in a granny gear would have been any faster or saved any more energy than hiking). After hike-a-biking several of the mountains with my SS in the Breck 100, I really think they should rename that section “Mildly Inconvenient” Hill, because “Misery” is somewhat of a misnomer. I hooked my saddle over my shoulder and booked it up the hill, enjoying the lavish amounts of oxygen I was able to extract from sea-level air. The next half mile or so was the only part of the race course that was the least bit technical. There were some short, steep ascents and descents and some rocks thrown in for good measure. By far, my favorite part.

The rest of the course kind of went by in a blur. I felt fine- my pace was good, I found guys to draft on the flat/downhill parts, ate & drank right, no cramps… I just was getting pwnt on the hills.

So, I ended up finishing over my 3 hour goal in 3:13, and all the way back in 16th place.

finish

Side note- this is the 3rd time I’ve had this number this season. Yep.

I’m not sure how many women were entered, but there was a good dose of horsepower there- including the gal who has won the last few years in a row, a former world champion from Priority Health, and Danielle Musto (not sure what I’d said that was so funny- probably something about being fat)…

DMfinish

It was a little disappointing. I’m kinda thinking I might drop down to the 50 for Fool’s Gold so that I won’t be dead once it comes time to race the SM100. Dunno- we’ll see what The Wizard think is best

EDIT/UPDATE: I looked at the results in the local paper, and turns out, I was 1st place in my age group (actually, the only woman who finished ahead of me in my age goup was Jenna, the winner. All of the other ones were older, of course. Older women are tough.

Andrea

Michigan Tech Trails

We left Copper Harbor on Thursday to head to Marquette. Along the way, we stopped at Michigan Tech (Ryan’s Alma Mater) to check out the trails. For those of you that aren’t “in the know” about Michigan Tech (fear not- I’m not sure if I’d even heard of it until I met Ryan), its specialty is engineering.

So, what do you get when you mix engineering and trail building?

Ramp-to-drop (I rode it! Ryan got video, but I still have to figure out how to get it on here)

steep

The long log ride (also rode that one a couple of times)

logon

logoff

Then there were some that we just kind of looked at in awe…

The Sine Wave:

wave

And, my personal favorite- The Dorkscrew:

dorkscrew

topscrew2

topout

After the section of trail with all of the cool stuff, there was another loop called the Hairy Toad loop. While it didn’t feature anything man-made, it was my absolute most favorite type of trail- rocky, rooty, and twisty. I call it ADD trail. I rode all of it except for a sizable rock garden that was wet and slimy. It looked like a swellbow waiting to happen.

On the way out, we found the pump track, which rode as if it had also been engineered over a few pints of beer. The berms on the downhill turns were the most perfectly angled piles of dirt you could possibly imagine. Scary fast, and really awesome.

I need to build some baby stuff in my back yard to keep practicing my skinny-stuff riding skills. As it stands, I’m too much of a chicken.

Andrea

Copper Harbor Trails

Wednesday morning when we woke up, we weren’t sure if our ride would be rained out or not. We figured we’d get out and ride as much of the IMBA’s “Epic” loop that we could before it moved in.

What a great trail! It heads straight out from the middle of the town of Copper Harbor and winds around the ridges behind it. They generally aren’t too technical until you get to the ones labeled as “black diamond” trails. The Red trail baits you in to hauling ass before suddenly dumping you down a rocky, off-camber steep thing with a tree growing in the middle. We quickly figured out to expect anything around each corner…

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It wasn’t JUST a bridge, it was a nearly vertical drop followed by a bridge (photo really doesn’t do it justice)…

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They really love the plank bridges out here. So do I…

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We ended up cutting our ride a little short in order to preserve our legs for the Ore to Shore race this weekend. After a little lunch and rest, we decided to drive around and visit the Delaware Mine (AKA the “safety last” tour). Mines are pretty cool…

Ryan_light

Andrea

The End of Michigan

Sort of, at least.

Yesterday when we got settled in at Copper Harbor, we decided to head out on some of the easier trails in the local trail system. However, I got sidetracked in thinking that maybe we could find the end of the Keweenaw out in Lake Superior. We passed a sign for the beginning of US Highway 41, but the road turned to gravel and kept going into the forest. Of course, I wanted to see where it went and what was at the end of it. It HAD to have an end, right?

Fast forward to half an hour and 600 feet of climbing later. We hadn’t found anything other than some nice forest roads. We figured we should turn back so we could get back to town before dark, so Ryan came up with a loop back based on his Garmin’s map. Though we ended up on at least one pretty sketchy section of “road,” we ended up having a great ride, and made it back in time to get to the last restaurant open before the town rolled up their sidewalks from the evening.

Photos…

Oh yeah, and, as you can see, I’m experimenting a bit with self-portrait type photos. Our motel also provides its guests with afro picks.

Andrea

Fon du Lac Day 2

Despite the rain, our second day of riding was better than expected. Just to get a change of scenery, we decided to drive to the Kettle Moraine area for our road ride. Ryan knew a loop from the Tour of America’s Dairyland race, so we parked in the town of Greenbush and headed out on the roads in Kettle Moriane State Park.

Along the way, we passed the entrance to the trails. Hmmm… it rained last night… well, no harm in just looking, right?

Turns out, the ground in that area is incredibly hard packed sandy/rocky mix. It had drained like nobodys business! We ended up riding the various loops for nearly an hour. They were awesome trails- at first you’re like, “hey, this is easy, flowy stuff…” but then you hit a patch of little wet rocks pocked across the trail, and you start sliding somewhat unpredictably. At first I was taking it kinda slow- the rocks were about golfball to softball in size, so you’d roll into a patch of them, and if you were going straight, the loss of control felt a little like riding sand (ok, really lumpy sand). After getting used to them, though, it was a blast.

We eventually left the trails and finished our loop back to the car. Back at the house, Ryan and I ate and decided to go out fishing on Lake Winnebago with his brother. We caught up a mess of Perch, and had a good fish bake/fry that night. Somehow, some of my roasted green beans found their waay in to the Fry Daddy…

Andrea

Rainy Fond du Lac

So, we’ve been in Fond du Lac since Saturday night, and both nights, it’s rained enough that we can’t (responsibly, at least) ride the Kettle Moraine trails that we were hoping to visit while we’re here. Yesterday, we headed out on the road, and along the way, we stopped by to check out a really small local system of trails. These are supposed to be multi-use, and the initial entrance to the different trails was marked with what uses are “OK” for what sections of trail, but we quickly found that if you took one trail marked for bikes, that it would dead end at another trail marked as “no bikes.” We rode in circles for about 45 minutes then got frustrated and hit the roads for another 15 miles or so.

dunno

road

windmill

After we were back and fed, we fished in the small canal behind the house. Surprisingly enough, remembering how to bait, cast, and un-fish a hook is kinda like remembering how to ride a bike…

fishin

bluegill

sadfish

We fished the rest of the day, had some dinner, and made preliminary plans to ride the trails since they “should” be dry. However, last night, another large patch of rain moved through the area and re-soaked the trail. So, if we want to ride, it’s out to the roads again. Normally, I wouldn’t mind that too much, but we only brought our mountain bikes, so it’s kinda boring. Ugh. Hopefully the rest of the trip isn’t so soggy.

Andrea

Heading back out

I feel like my blog has been unusually quiet lately. Maybe it’s just because I’m not reporting my daily adventures whilst on the road in beautiful New Mexico and Colorado. I know (hope?) you guys liked reading that, and, while it did do wonders for my daily site traffic, I have to say, it was occasionally a chore.

Want more?

I’m heading out tomorrow morning with Ryan to make our yearly summer trip to Wisconsin and Michigan to visit his family (you can see his mom’s hiking/traveling stories at http://isleroyalegirl.blogspot.com/. While I can’t promise that this trip will be anywhere remotely as interesting as my former adventure, it will include some camping, MTB racing (Ore to Shore), and maybe a trip to a cheese factory and/or a copper mine… something touristy like that.

In the meantime, if you want something intersting, check out Bad Idea Racing for some “hey, y’all, watch this” type action. Or, take a bath in cheese curls. The choice is yours.

Andrea

Summertime Syllamo Trail Conditions

I’m very sad to type this right now, but I found out yesterday (the hard way, of course) that there are frequent sections of overgrowth on my favorite trails. Violent, thorny, skin-ripping overgrowth. I left Memphis yesterday in hopes to go for a short ride on the Red trail then head out for a longer blue/orange ride this morning. However, once I was on the trail, my hopes for fun rides quickly faded into visions of blood and spiders.

Well, I’d say that about 90% of the trail was OK. It was a little bushy, but as long as you watched out for new deadfall and rocks, you’d be OK…

good

However, the bad, overgrown parts were really bad…

bad

I managed about 7 miles of the loop before I said “eff it” and took a bail-out trail back to Green Mountain road. I was bleeding from my elbows and knees, and (despite saturating myself with bugsray) wondered how many spiders, ticks, and chiggers were invading my skin. It sucked.

seeds

glove

ow1

leg

bugs

BTW- those little brown dots are bugs of some sort. Chiggers? Ticks? I have no idea. I hosed them with bug spray so they’d stay put in the time before I got into the shower. I was pretty disappointed in the whole thing.

After getting back to the cabin & cleaning up, I headed back down to Anglers for some catfish, then made it back to the cabin just in time to catch the tail end of the sunset, which made things a little better…

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Andrea

Gutter Bunny Ride

Back before I left for Colorado, Jason Oakley (from Outdoors, Inc.) and I started a group ride that we deemed the Gutter Bunny Ride. Every Thursday at 6(ish), we head out for a ride that will include roads, dirt, and usually some sort of hike-a bike. Rain or shine, we go out and have an awesome time.

Google Earth screenshot of the route:

route

Here are some phone photos from this Thursday’s adventure (most are foggy- it started raining… a lot)

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climb

bridge

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Andrea

Sponsorship Requests- better than internet dating

I won’t try and keep it a secret- since I arrived home from Colorado, I’ve been sending my race resume and bio out to my favorite companies. Chances are, some of the people I’ve sent it to are reading this post right now. It feels like internet dating- I like you, I send you my info, then anxiously await a reply back, hoping to gain your approval.

I hope that you (people I’ve requested sponsorship from) realize that I’m more “e-harmony” than “adult friend finder.” I mean, I’m honestly looking for support from companies that I already really love and extole the virtues of to all of my friends and riding partners (both on the internet AND in real life). You got a request not just because I’m in need of some help for 2011, but also because I love your stuff, and I want to help spread the word so that you can keep on making awesome stuff for years to come.

Sponsoring me is a hell of a lot cooler than a first date, because, unlike the date, you know you love me already ;)