IMBCS #8 Sycamore Trails

Sycamore trails! This one is about as close as we get to a "home" MTB race. An urban/river/interstate trail system, things were well prepped, smooth and fast, fast. Lots of cool features, including two-way traffic on a power-line road, kept things different. 

There was a nice long road chunk at the start line which was great for me since most people in my category aren't real proficient at sprinting. I was feeling pretty good today and held onto a decent spot. 

Staycation Rollout

Corrine and I decided to try something new for a spring/summer vacation and will be using our home for a hub and doing/seeing things which can make a day trip. It does not offer the wide open spaces and solitude we are accustomed to when we travel, but the hope is that it will be generally less strenuous and offer more recovery.  For the initial staycation day, the plan was to see the DSM farmer's market and have a ride afterward. 

We rode into the downtown area and parked our bikes at this extremely expansive and newly finished trail-head / park. 

We found a truck selling sausage/egg biscuits which were being made on the grill right there. They were fantastic. 

There were two of these bears? wandering around.

The turnout was huge as usual and things bordered on crowded. I always enjoy being here - the demographics and culture of the down-town area are significantly different compared to those at home and sometimes I need that in order to recharge. 

After finding breakfast and buying some delicious vegie bread, we walked back to the bikes and rolled out for a ride. The skies were somewhat ominous. By ominous I mean, I can clearly see where rain is pouring down in the distance, ominous. This simply means it's nearly adventure time and we put on rain gear.

We stop for a bit under a highway overpass.

"Trail Closed" sign? Bah, that just means "go look over there". 

We found several flooded areas, some were over the shoes while pedaling but it was all good.

We eventually arrive in Beaverdale for lunch. Doing some riding in bike lanes here.

We rode past this family of geese a couple times and it appears they have new hatch lings out and about.

Arriving back in DSM, we sat around on the end of the new trail park again. It's taken a couple years to get this all finished but it turned out to be really spectacular.

Iowa Bike Summit

Corrine, Cody and I went to the Iowa Bike Summit in Des Moines. This is a two day event with the first day focusing on bike infrastructure development/engineering as well as community development. The second day is an product/event expo. 

There was in fact a bacon booth! This was extremely good stuff too - they did compete at BaconFest so there's that...

Corrine doing a mini test-ride on a Foundry 29'er

Here's' a SuperSix Evo. It is more or less the lightest frameset on the planet right now. The Cannondale regional rep. was there and informed us that this is the "heavy" version. There's a lighter version which doesn't have decals or paint. 

Crank for SRAM's new XX1 group, using a single front chain-ring.

New SRM power-meter. These things are ultra-cool. There's a set of strain-gauges setup between the chain-ring and crank arm. The rep. told us that the new ones are now able to determine power output separately between right leg and left leg as well!

My car also changed color from black to white for a day. Weird?

Sky Bridge!

Aaaand penny-farthing out for a cruise.

Dirty Duathlon!

Today was a blast. Corrine and I did the Des Moines Dirty Duathlon as a relay team. I did the mountain-biking and Corrine ran. The arrangement was: 2mi-run, 12mi-mtb, 2mi-run. The course design was difficult, tiring, and just generally great. This is definitely one to look forward to doing again.

We'd discussed beforehand that this was the type of event which no one is trying as their first race just to see how it goes. Finish result: better than expected - second from last but not last :)

Spooky Cross!

This event was significantly smaller than expected. I guess I had previously decided in my head what it should be like based on Survivor-Cross (same location). As you can see below, I was (apparently) already tired at staging since I'm having a good yawn.

The course was easy from a technicality point of view but really became a killer over time because a majority of it involved riding in long grass on top of soft ground. Leg-burning city.

(Starting in the back like an idiot....)

Fat Tire Finale!

This was a most unexpected finale. I really did think it would be raining at some point during this whole thing but we actually had solid weather for the duration. 

The destination today was Confluence Brewery which is near Gray's Lake just outside downtown Des Moines. We got a private (as a group) look and tasting session before the public grand opening. This place isn't joking around - large capacity and way bigger than any other brewer in the nearby area.

Multiple kettles.

Heading back to El Baitshop to wait for the bike raffle.

...I don't know what this is.

After the raffle (didn't win), we went looking for some offroad trails to ride. We had 2x CX bikes and one road bike?

Not many pictures of the trails (as I was working to keep my road-bike upright on wet dirt) but this one dead-ended in some construction.

Found some ultra-fine/dense sand that my bike easily stood up in.