Leadville 100

As I write this our very own Ken Chappell is already underway in his quest for a Leadville 100 trail run finish. Good luck Ken on your journey.

HOT!!

Ok, admittedly I think I speak on behalf of everyone ont the team EXCEPT for Ken perhaps when I say that our training has dropped off in frequency during this 139 degree summer.
I went to Breckenridge, Colorado for 4 days in mid July and it was absolutely fantastic there.
Ken is presently training hardcore for the Leadville 100 Trail Run in August. What a great base he will have for a long adventure race this fall....Hmmmm, Berryman 36 hour comes to mind. We shall see. Standby.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Ozark Greenways 8-14 hour Adv Race

Alright alright, Greenways Part 3 for Cyclewerx. This was our third year doing OGAR, a race we really look forward to for alot of reasons. It has become a much tougher race than it traditionally was in it's earlier years. This year proved to be very tough. We all headed down to Gasconade Hills on Friday to camp, and the race begins Saturday morning although we don't know what time. We found out on Friday night that it began Saturday morning at 7 am. No real shock there, a standard time for a 8-14 hr race during late May.

On Friday evening we pretty much found out for sure that due to heavy recent spring rains, the Gasconade was swollen out of its banks and the race personnel determined that it was not safe to have us do the paddling portion of this race. Bummer, two years in a row that this has happened to this race. Mother Nature wins again. So we get the maps on Saturday morning at the 5:15 am map handout, and we learn that instead of doing the paddling leg down the Gasconade to get from CP 9 to CP 11, we now had to trek about 7 miles additional to make up for that segment. Anyway, getting ahead of myself here....

We take off at 7 am for the start of what was a 9 CP trekking leg/orienteering leg. We (ahemm, I) made our usual blunders and had a few snafu's in finding a few of the CP's. We came into CP 9 frustrated because we were near the front of the pack from CP1 to CP 5, but I screwed up on CP 6 and 7 and we lost time. We checked in with the volunteer, then began the trek back to the Race Start/HQ/Transition Area where our bikes were awaiting us.

The bike leg(s) of this race were surprisingly good. They were on some horse trails but were very "singletrack like." Once I heard that the river was swollen and the paddling was cancelled, I had assumed that the trails would be sloppy, muddy, rutted out and essentially unrideable. I had envisioned pushing bikes for 50 percent of the trail sections, but boy was I wrong. I would say it was more like 95 percent rideable, 5 percent pushing your bike. RIght on, I'll take that. We hit the CP's without incident, no nav problems and no bike mechanicals.

The bike/orienteering leg was pretty cool. It actually gave some good route choices. We also hit this section pretty much without incident and hit all CP's quite well with the exception of the fact that somehow I had nav'd us right past a pond where a CP was located. We did a full circle and came back and found it. Sigh.....

Now, the poo hit the fan when I, out of the blue, had some crazy dang allergic reaction to who knows what. Trouncing around in the forest on a hot, sweaty 88+ degree afternoon in poison ivy, oak, psumac, thorns, and everything else under the sun, well.....The toxins must have finally penetrated into my bloodstream and I puffed up. I was a little worried, my face was puffy, eyes were swollen, heart was a little racy, and my throat was a bit constricted, but we only had an hour on the bike (roads) back to the finish left. With only a few easy turns on roads, I threw the map at Marc and Ken and told them to figure out where to go from here back to the finish. I couldn't hardly see out of my swollen eyes to read the map. We took off on the bikes and came through the finish line not really having any idea what place we were in.




So, the results were in: We finished in 6th place out of 36 teams in 4 person co-ed, and 12th overall out of 79 teams which included 2 person teams as well as about a half dozen solo racers. The top teams really cooked the course, somewhere just over 6 hrs. Downhill Bikes blitzed into first place. Man those guys are awesome. Great athletes, great attitudes. I love getting our butts kicked by them!!!! Our race time was 9 hrs 35 minutes.

It was the first really hot day of the year, where temps approached 90 degrees, so there were alot of DNF's. The attrition rate for this race was higher than years past. We had our own issues, dehydration, allergies, etc. but overall, we laid down a solid race. It was a very good day to be an adventure racer. Marc, Ken and Jill all did great all day long. I was proud to have them as my teammates and I always have been. I was illin' from that allergy thing so badly that I didn' even get to back down to the campsite to hang out with my teamies after the race. Heck, I didn't even get a Fat Tire afterwards.
Post by Bryan Greaser

LBL 24 Hour

Well there isn't a whole lot to say about the LBL 24 hr. We didn't finish the race. Ken had major knee issues during our second trekking leg (actually much earlier than that) so we pulled out. He was really beginning to hobble pretty badly.
The weather for the race was phenomenal though, and it was an overall great event once again. Ken was a warrior about it, not wanting to give up, but when you are doing the trekking legs of a race with a tree branch for a staff to assist your walking (I called him Gandolf)it is time to call it a day.

Next up for us is the Ozark Greenways Adventure Race near Richland, MO. Hopefully we'll all be healthy and put in a solid finish as we have the past couple of years.

Post by Bryan Greaser

LBL Challenge 24 hour coming up!!!!!!

Well the weather has been crazy phenomenal, with sunny skies, dry singletrack trails, and 70 degree temps.....perfect for training, right? Well, not exactly. When we ran the Syllamo Arkansas "3 Days of Syllamo" event earlier in March (Ken did the 50k and the 50 Mile but the third day run was scrapped, Marc and I only did the
50k), Ken managed to get a blood clot in his lower leg from the 80+ miles of unforgiving pounding of the rocky trails around Syllamo. So Ken was, at least for a day, I think, questionable for the LBL 24 hr Challenge next week. His foot and lower leg looked kind of like a football minus the leather, and the seams, I guess.... I have always heard that canines have a high threshold of pain tolerance. I think Ken is part Poodle.
Here's the foot pic:


Making matters worse, I was doing some carpentry type work about two weeks ago and was in the baseball catcher's squat position, and I had been that way for a few hours working in a small space, and I turned while squatting and felt an "Uh-oh" pain in my right knee. It turned out to be more than an annoyance, and I thought it best to play it safe and keep off of it despite needing to continue training for the upcoming race(s), but I have stayed off of my feet to let it heal. I have been able to ride the mountain bike though at least so that's good. Oh well, what's a guy supposed to do? It is almost never the wrong decision to let something heal longer than probably necessary rather than risk re-injury by getting back on it too soon. I'll be well rested for LBL.

So the field is shaping up to be a dandy once again. Some top notch teams coming in. It won't take very many more teams to enter the race to match last year's racer participation total which I think was about 210.

Race should be able to be followed on Internet via Checkpoint Tracker somewhat "live" but that has been, on more than one occasion, a disappointment. Having helped put this race on in 2009, I saw how difficult it is to keep Checkpoint Tracker updated. It takes alot of time and alot of volunteers to make it work (and good internet connections in remote locations), and when emergencies and other duties come up like picking up teams in the middle of the night who are lost or injured, a race director quickly finds he can only do so much at once. Here's to hoping everyone can get updates at home.

It's gonna be good. Like really, really good.

Oh, and one final thing. Marc has some back issues so instead of waiting to see if he could get clearance to race, we made the decision to try to find a replacement, and lo and behold, who have we found to join us for this race but none other than Lullel Hickman himself from Downhill Bikes. Couldn't do any better than that. That's for bailing us out Lullel! Looking foward to racing with you, but we'll sure miss Marc.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Ultramax 8 Hour Adventure Race

For starters, Ultramax did an overall tremendous job in designing, executing, and organizing this first-time race for them. We were super excited for starters because this kicks off the 2010 race season for us, but we weren't too sure what to expect from Ultramax since this was their first stab at putting one of these races on. I won't say that my expectations were necessarily low, but I figured they would have some "hiccups" along the way and there was only one which I will get to later...

Ok, since Ken Chappell couldn't race with us on this one we picked up Elizabeth Sparks who is an accomplished triathlete who lives here in Cape Girardeau. She is very strong, brings navigation skills to the table, and is tremendously easy to get along with in a team environment. Perfect racing partner, period.
The Friday night mandatory gear check and team meeting was late, and by the time we got our maps (killer, by the way), found out the 6 am start time (ouch, 24 degrees) and drove back to Jill's house in St. Chuck, we didn't even start plotting (21 CP's) until 10:30 and I got to bed at about 1 am after I stayed up a bit longer just to familiarize myself with the overall course map and flow. Wakeup time was agreed upon by all to be 3:30 am and that sucked but there would be time to sleep on Saturday night after the race.

Saturday morning we did a bike drop below a lake dam at 5 am, then drove to the parking area/Race HQ, tried to stay warm, hit the toilets, and lined up for the headlamp trekking start. We ran on a gravel trail and hit CP1 easily as daylight began to flirt with us, then the mass group began to thin out some but still quite a few pockets of racers in line. CP2 looked super easy on the map but I stupidly followed some groups that blew right past it and then made another turn away from it. This ended up causing us to 'wander' for a little bit and we finally went back and the pond was concealed by evergreen trees. Ok, not a good way to start off, costing us alot of time early. My fault.

Next we hit CP3 on a hilltop easily, then somehow I had us heading South towards CP4 when Elizabeth quickly noticed that we made a wrong turn at CP3 and that we should be heading W instead of S, so we quickly righted ourselves back to CP3, then easily went on to hit CP4. CP4 was at the bottom of a reentrant in one of the steepest hillsides I have seen on any adv race terrain. CP5 & CP6 were nailed, then we headed on up to the transition at the lake to hit the paddling leg.
The paddling leg was uneventful except for the awesome fiberglass canoes and the frozen coves. So many canoes going back into the coves were breaking up the one inch thick ice which was causing some slow going for teams but otherwise no big deal.
We finished the canoes, transitioned to foot and trekked to CP8 where we picked up bikes.

The bike leg hitting CP9 thru CP14 was mostly gravel roads, some doubletrack/horse trails, and quite a few creek crossings to get the ole feet wet, wet, wet. It was probably about 18 km and the CP's were easy. No problems here.
When we arrived at CP14 on bikes we dropped them and transitioned back to trek where we would be going out on about a 5 km orienteering course to find CP15 thru CP19 in any order (Rogaine style). CP15 was super easy following a powerline, CP16 also easy at the edge of a lake, CP17 was in a very pronounced reentrant feeding into another large reentrant, and from there we could see a hilltop that we shot up, then followed the flat terrain SE and around a reentrant, then a turn W to where the land had 4 distinct ridges overlooking a valley and Charette Creek below. The terrain was unmistakeable and I was confident since we were just ticking these CP's off so well. When we came upon the ridge where CP18 was plotted on the map, we went out onto the ridge and could not find it. Repeatedly looking at the map and comparing it to the terrain, I was sure it had to be there....Well it wasn't. Soon other teams started showing up and we compared plots, thinking maybe I mis-plotted. Nope. Had it right on. I then decide that maybe the race director plotted it over onto another ridge mistakenly so we went out onto another one and the same thing....Nowhere to be found. We had wasted alot of time by now. Forum Dental came along and told us that they had been to the TA and the volunteer told them that teams were finding CP18 so it had to exist. Hmmmm.

We went ahead and made our way towards CP19 and a four male team said that they found it but that it was indeed mis-plotted onto the wrong ridge. So we proceeded to go S and nailed CP19, then on our way back went over and sure enough, we found the mis-plotted CP18 on a paralell ridge but the ridges were very different from each other. The Race director realized the error and in a very professional way acknowledged it on the website. While all CP's were checked by GPS by the race management, I think they found out the hard way that the GPS method of checking CP's is not always accurate.

Next we hooked up our running tow system and made our way back to the CP14/20 Transition area and transitioned back to bike where we just had to go bike about 5k, hit CP21 and then on to the Finish Area where a "Challenge Course" would be waiting.

The Challenge course consisted of taking an empty sandbag, running to a lake about 3/4 mile away (guessing), filling it with a minimum of 30 lbs of sand, then each team member had to carry the sandbag back to the Race Finish to complete a small obstacel type course with their sandbag. The 'kicker' was that when you filled the sandbag, there was not a scale there, and if you returned to the Finish/Race HQ and the bag did not weigh 30 lbs, you and every team member had to go back to the beach to bring the weight up to 30 lbs. The mental side of that translates to "I'll be damned if I am going to take any chance of having to carry this thing all the way back here," so you end up wayyy overfilling it to make sure, sure, sure. When we took the bags back to the Finish area they all met the minimum weight.

We crossed the Finish at 8 hrs 31 minutes, good for 4th place in 4 person co-ed and 12th place overall. It was a nice event, great weather, and we all felt pretty strong. Innsbrook is a great setting for an adventure race. We plan on being back next year. I would be willing to bet that Ultramax learned a hard lesson about the misplaced CP and will go over and above double and triple checking them for accuracy in the future.

Post by Bryan Greaser

Race calendar 2010

Well we are super, super excited in the early race season calendar. Despite a recent miserable period of cold, cold weather and dreary skies, we are all eagerly looking forward to some upcoming races. Here's what we are shooting for right now for sure in the first half of 2010:

March 6th, Ultramax 8 Hr Adventure race near Innsbrook, MO This is Ultramax's first crack at an adventure race, and they normally put on triathlons. Ken is unable to race this one with us so we have Elizabeth Sparks, an accomplished triathlete to say the least joining us for this one. Cannot wait.

March 13th: Myself, Ken and Marc will be traveling to Syllamo Arkansas for Three Days of Syllamo, a strictly trail running event on the hallowed trails of Syllamo. You can bite off as much or as little as you want for this 3 day event. The mileage of trail running equals 100 miles over the three days if you choose all 3 days.

April 10th weekend we have the Bonk Hard Racing 24 Hr LBL Challenge. This is one we absolutely positively cannot wait for. This will be myself, Marc, Ken and Jill.

Finally, in May we have the Ozark Greenways race once again near Richland Missouri. We have had good success at this race over the past few years and hope to continue that success or possibly even improve on it.

We'll be looking to supplement another race in the mix somewhere during June or July, then hopefully we can tackle the Berryman 36 hr in September.

Post by Bryan Greaser