IMBCS #4 Sunderbruch

Back to Davenport this weekend for what would be another large and well organized event. Similar to the last FORC-run race we did, there were lots of great people handling all the nuts and bolts to make everything seamless. There were even a few vendor tents and another fabulous grill/caterer.

What continues to be fun for me about this points series is riding new trails that I've never seen before. All of them have been great so far and this Sunderbruch system was near the top of my favorites (as Iowa goes). This was also the first time this year when we'd pre-ride the course beforehand, which was really nice. 

Some photos from pre-riding. We arrived the evening before and had plenty of light to put a few miles in.

It's race day and the sun is shining! The forecast calls for clear skies all day.

The race started with a long road climb up a paved multi-purpose path before the course split out onto singletrack. The climb was good for finding max heart rate, which didn't burn me out today since I actually spent a few minutes warming up. We were to do two laps of this course for a total of 6ish miles. There was lots of elevation gain and also some blazing down-hill action. As I was climbing on my second lap, I got to witness a guy blasting the downhill section, hitting something, and sailing like a paper airplane off into the bushes/mini-ravine. Before he even stops falling, he's already moaning "Was it a good one?". The row of people standing along the side videoing assured him that it was.

Elkhart TT #4

The fourth of five Elkhart time-trials was today. It was a beautiful night to be outside, just a little warm with a constant gentle breeze. It seemed there was a slightly smaller crowd this month and I'm guessing the Iowa Games had a thing or two to do with it. 

A pretty standard time trial for spectating - watch people ride off down the road and then they eventually come back. Highlights included Corrine getting another 1st place which locked up her 1st overall in the points series. It's now a sure thing even if she doesn't show up for the final.  A new one for me was a sighting of a bamboo tandem bike!

IMBCS # 3 Seven Oaks

After a long break where there's a gap in the season schedule, we're hitting it hard now! IMBCS #3 today which is at Seven Oaks Recreation near Boone IA. The race staging and registration is on top of the ski slope. Somehow arriving early (new experience for us), we find that there is almost no one here and wonder how tiny these fields will be. We find the parking area where there are a few more vehicles and get setup. More people rolled in later but I think there were less than ten people in my category. 

I don't have any pictures of the Jimmy Johns team racing but there were several photographers wandering around so we'll see if anything turns up. 

This course was super fast and has a pleasant mix of technical features as well as smooth downhill runs. It sounded like lots of people had visited to pre-ride it in the week prior but we did no such thing and, in fact, didn't even go on the trail prior to staging. After a really fast start down some gravel, I was trying to stay in 3rd and ended up blowing through some marker tape and almost rode into a big drop-off. 

As we were milling around waiting for official results, I saw a guy licking shot-blocks and sticking them to his top tube. He claimed this works great and they stick best if you get the Margarita flavor. He was racing Cat-1 Expert and we did see him later after finishing his first lap with the blocks still on board.

Official (enough to fill the podium spots anyway) results came out with Cody in 2nd place in his category and Corrine 3rd in hers. I think I am 6th (same category as Cody) but no complete list out yet.

Wednesday

Big road ride today, that's been a while. We're checking out the Neal Smith / Ding Darling Refuge trail today, which connects Ankeny and Polk City to Downtown DSM. There's an easy potential for 60+ miles here but we would be slightly time limited toward evening. Doing this as an out-and-back makes it easy to manage time because you just use up 40%-50% of your total time and, provided you're not so burned out that you slow down, just head back and everything works out about right.

Heading out, we use the new cycle/ped bridge again. I can never remember what it's called but I like the construction. It's made of three arches, two of which are lying down opposing each-other with cables up to the vertical arch. Some more pictures at this site here: 

Rolling on some inter-urban trail past the Botanical Center where there's major construction going on.

Out on the Neal Smith trail, there's a large section seeing major shoreline erosion from the river. My first guess would be that this is caused by the river running at an elevated level but there were permanent warning signs installed well ahead on the trail so there must have been a steep disintegrating bank here for a while.

I don't have a great picture of this but just to the left of Corrine's head in the shot below, there's a small Asian man jumping as high as he can, trying to pull a few mulberries off the lower hanging branches. There were several areas out here that had what looked like a giant oil slick/stain on the pavement because of all the mulberries.

We make it to Saylorville Lake, which greets us with a nice long curvy descent through open meadowy landscape. Somewhere around here is where the big climbing started and continued to Polk City. My Garmin showed something like 1,300ft of elevation gain / 2600ft elevation change. At one point on the way back, I was descending at over 30mph while still on the brakes!

Arriving at a campground that we passed through, there was a slow speed zone. 

And speed limit demolished (while pretty much coasting, haha).

Another big drop out of the forest into the sunshine along this dam. I don't know what lake is on the other side, it's not Saylorville anymore. 

We turned around here at Polk City in order to ensure enough time to get back. About 45miles for the day and a little over 3hrs moving time. My Garmin also calculated that this took 2,600 calories! Time for some ice cream. 

Lots of wildlife along the refuge, including tame deer. 

While fording flood water across the trail, I followed these baby ducks for a while before they headed off into the river. 

Tuesday

Out earlier with more time, we decided to try a new trail today which is located in Johnston. Many of these urban "wilderness" areas are very close to rivers so there is always the possibility of flooding. 

After remembering insect repellent, we are off to explore the Sycamore Trail System.

The photo below is indicative of a recurring theme. 

We had to re-route on the pavement to escape flooded areas. The river is so high that these trails barely work. 

Doing this on my mountain bike, I was glad there were only a few miles of pavement.

One of many neat rest/camping areas out here. To describe this system in a word: flow! Everything is well manicured and designed to be ridden fast. It sort of gave me a feeling more like west-coast designs v/s the tight switch-backing type of trail which is more common around here.

There were several sections along power-line roads, which is always fun.

We were fortunate to have no precipitation while on the bikes. It certainly would have turned into a total mud bath, requiring lots of hiking to get back out.

The trip home, however, was a different story. The clouds blazed down rain and hail on us to the point where some vehicles were pulling off on the side of the road to wait it out. 

Variety is the spice of life and nothing truly great is easy. Good trip!