IMBCS #6 George Wyth

Now over the half-way point in our MTB series, it's time to take on some shorter drives. Only 2.5hrs each way today.

This race was at George Wyth State Park, just outside Waterloo. I'd never been to this area before really and it was quite a bit different than I expected. It was very marshy / swampy and had ponds all over the place. There were big sand pits, single-track trail right next to the water and even a few tree canopy tunnels. XC-3 even got to do a nearly respectable length race here at two laps and 45-minutes ride time. Unfortunately for Corrine, Women XC-3 was only running one lap for half the time of the men. It's hard to pick a favorite course so far this year but this one would be near the top.

The management was really great and had all sorts of food and beverage available. A local coffee roaster brought out a big Igloo cooler. It was, amazingly, not regular coffee but rather a cooler full of espresso with some milk and ice thrown in it. Perfect! I hadn't had espresso for a while. There was also a local brewery and pizza/pasta house handing out free food.
Speaking of food, I was trying a new nutrition strategy today which was to consume as many carbohydrate calories as possible. This is an undertaking from me since I'm rarely actually hungry. I had several packs of shot-bloks before the race even started and then went straight into full-calorie SoBE drinks right after the race ended. I felt the best I've felt after a race since probably April or so. We've been using a nutrition coach lately as well, and the general learning we've done there is that our calorie counts are just too low. Onto more eating!

We hung around for a while to wait on results/awards and watch XC 1/2 start. 

Corrine came away with a 3rd pa

And Cody with second.

IMBCS #5 Moorehead Pioneer Park

I think this was about the earliest we've left home for a race, out on the road before 5:00am. We had about a 200mi drive to north-west Iowa and our race starts mid-morning. 

Our new strategy to arrive at check-in more than 5-minutes before staging has been going well. This leaves us time to do things like unpack, eat, and pre-ride the course. My legs were feeling decent when we got there and I think I'm starting to adjust to the new training schedule. Corrine and I have been spending two days a week in the gym doing both weight-lifting and running, two days a week on bike trainers in the garage doing interval max training, and two more days putting in mileage out on the trail/road. This leaves one day of doing nothing but that might become yoga soon. I like it!

The whole thing was a blast with constant brutal transitions from steep climbs to fast, swoopy downhill. Lap times were running 22-28min. Being in Category-3 and only doing one lap made me wish again to upgrade next year for some more ride time. We'll see. 

Corrine took home a 3rd place and Cody snagged a #1 spot. 

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.

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.

IMBCS #2 Ingawanis

We had a nice full day today, about 350 miles of driving with a race in the middle. This was IMBCS #2 at Camp Ingawanis near Waverly IA. With all the rain and snow over the past week, it would seem that course conditions would be questionable and we'd been getting email updates from the director that parts of the course would be removed and re-routed as required with total length determined day-of. During the drive, we passed many crop fields with either a remaining coating of snow or standing water which couldn't drain away.

Once we arrived, the venue area seemed to have drained out pretty well as it's located at relatively high elevation. This was a low-key event run by extremely nice people. No USA-Cycling officials, just a verbal count-down and "GO". 

I did a crappy, crappy job on the start-gate sprint and wound up working around several people over the first 1/4 of the lap. Due to course modifications implemented to accommodate the weather, we were only doing like 5.25 miles and only a single lap at that. Finish times were around 30-minutes so it was a short one. I finished 5th in my category and Corrine finished 2nd in hers, putting her on the podium! Cody's rear derailleur folded into his wheel spokes and was completely destroyed about 10 minutes after the start. On the bright-side, there are still series points for DNF? Bummer because Cody had already gapped the entire field and had only one straggler holding on. That almost certainly would have been a first place finish. Next time.

I don't really have any trail pictures, only the open grassy area used for start/finish. It was pretty fun with a bunch of flowy singletrack. There was also an unintended mud pit at the end for flavor. 

The race director and team had provided a big crockpot of pasta as well as cookies etc. and I saw the below object off to the side. This is a boy-scout camp (all race proceeds went to the scouts) and I think this was some sort of food which was left in a fridge last summer and was just discovered today? As mold goes, there's a pretty impressive color pallet. It's also pretty good at growing up and out of the pan. 

I think these podium logs were broken - Corrine is second place but still way taller than first. Maybe it's just the photo angle?

Up Next: IMBCS #3 Seven-Oaks Rec!

Sylvan Island Stampede, season opener

Race report: Sylvan Island Stampede. This is also known as IMBCS #1 for those doing the Iowa MTB series. I had been looking forward to getting the MTB season started for a while, especially since we get to do so riding for Jimmy Johns. Weather forecasting looked for rain but warm temps so it would be fun either way. I switched to water-proof chain lube just in case (thanks speedo-wearing Pro-Gold guy at Jingle-Cross!).

We stayed overnight at Joe's place in Davenport after an uneventful trip and got up bright and early(ish) to prepare the next morning. After leaving with roughly the exact amount of time required to get to the race remaining, I discovered that it's no problem to drive 55 in the 30 zones around the quad-cities - handy! What was truly a surprise was the train which we had to wait on while we could see the parking-lot for the venue. As the train slowed and then stopped, a plan was formed that we'd simply park on the side of the road and jump over the train car hitches with our bikes and ride the rest of the way. After driving a little further down the road, the end of the train appeared and we were able to drive around! I do regret that I did not take a picture of the guy who got out of his vehicle to yell and shake his fists at the train.

Arriving at the registration table with ten minutes (per the dj/announcer) until race-go, Cody got his number plate and was all set. Corrine and I were left to stand there and wait (on what I'm not sure) when someone in the registration tent answered a cell-phone call and promptly told the other volunteers that the race was closed to new entries. We were told that so long as we pre-registered (we had), we were still o.k. but between the time we handed our waivers back and receiving our number plates, the race was totally closed. Not racing in the correct category meant that any points earned that day were basically forfeit. We could choose to race Category-2 or a special Maverick class. Category-2 started too late and wouldn't work, so we did Maverick instead. This was a longer course as well as requiring one extra lap to be completed. It also counted for nothing series-wise and isn't even listed on USA-Cycling.

Shortly before Maverick race time, we were milling around and noticed a small line of people removing bar-end / integrated grips from their bikes and discussing where to get new clamps. Joe had also noticed an official going around telling people they had to come off. This was not good - both Corrine and I run Ergons with the shortest bar-end. I plan on resisting at first but then realize that an official is pulling people off the start line as well so it's inevitable. Thankfully there was a bike shop running a repair/support tent. They sold us new grips and even gave us a discount because we didn't have any more money to cover the asking price.  The news later was that this is the first year that USA-Cycling ran a combined rulebook for both road and mountain-bike. A rule about no bar-ends for road cycling (and cyclocross) was then enforced against mountain biking. It apparently caused quite a stir, as it got a regional coordinator and technical director involved and suddenly fixed now.

Shiny new grips and number plate installed, we lined up near the front. This worked out about perfect for me as I finished only a couple places from where I started. It's such a huge waste of time and energy working your way through a crowd. It was a really cool course because it's different from most things I've ridden. I certainly wouldn't want to ride on broken concrete/bricks/re-bar all the time but it's fun to do something new. This island used to be home to a factory which has since become decayed and shrouded by replacement plant life.

Finishing 12 out of 39 in a harder category than planned, I felt pretty good about my fitness given that we've only been hitting it hard since Jan-1 (4-5hrs on trainers and 2-3hrs outside each week ever since). Most definitely it's going to get way better throughout the summer. I had a mini battle with another guy for the entire final lap and we did a big sprint to the finish. We tied (stats do not go past .01 resolution) for fastest finish sprint in the whole category. There was a timing gate a couple hundred yards from the actual finish gate so they were measuring that section. I had a new peak heart-rate of 207 and averaged 180 over the entire 70 minutes. I certainly would have burned completely out trying that last year!

I have no pictures of my own really so I'm using the ones provided by Hanson Photo, which look great.


Most photographs courtesy of Hanson Photo Design - thanks!

Minor component carnage - I'd completely forgotten about a cracked pedal body on my mountain-bike. I discovered it over a year ago when using the grease-gun on them. Grease started coming out of the crack instead of the shaft seal! Long story short, it almost became a major issue. I found it as below when unloading at home after the race. Good thing it survived until the finish. Due to the pedal construction, it won't completely fall apart even if that cleat boss tears off, but it would kinda suck to only have one side functioning the whole time.

The stainless-steel ring was just flopping around and you could almost pull it off. 

Strip and clean.

I got a new body kit, loaded them with grease and reassembled. Good as new!