CIRREM

2011 finish time: Six hours, six minutes.

2012 finish time: Five hours, twenty-three minutes.

2013 finish time: Four hours, thirty minutes.

I'm digging this trend...

Winter in Review

The good times: me at the I AM FAT fatbike race in Iowa City.

In some cases this winter has been a lousy one for me, and in others it's gone fairly well.  Might as well get the bad out of the way.

I signed up for three winter ultras this season and didn't finish any of them.  I pulled out of the Tuscobia 150 after a paltry 63 miles due largely to a sore back.  Arrowhead ended for me at the second checkpoint when a mid-race snowstorm dumped 8-10" of fresh, unrideable powder on the trail and I found myself unprepared and unwilling to push 65lbs of bike and gear for the next 60+ miles.  When the racers at Triple D were rolling out, I was riding the couch and nursing a flu.  And that flu?  That was the second time this winter that I got sick when it's rare for me to fall ill once in a year.

But lets focus on the good.

• We had more of a winter this year, allowing me to get a fair amount of quality snow riding in.  I rolled quite a bit of snow with Charles, which was a lot of fun.  I also got a few good chances to do some cold weather gear testing, something that didn't happen much last year.  That allowed me to do my first ride in sub-zero temperatures at a peak low of -7F after bivying out in my backyard overnight. 
• I've lost 15lbs since Halloween.  Only five away from my Trans Iowa goal weight.
• Back in December I rolled my fastest gravel metric ever, stopping the clock at 4 hours and 15 minutes when I hit 62.1 miles.  This was no cupcake of a route either, with damp roads and 3000 feet of climbing.  
• A couple days ago I headed out for one of my weekly night rides with Charles and set an new PR for getting to Ivanhoe road, knocking two minutes and 30 seconds off my previous best over seven miles. 
• The week before Triple D I did the I Am Fat fatbike race.  There was no snow at that point so it ended up being a cold weather MTB race in a three hour format.  I raced the solo category and took third place behind Charles and Dennis Grelk with 19 laps.  That had me finish ahead of about 80% of the relay racers as well.
• Technically pre-winter, but I won the American Gothic Gravel Invitational back in October.  This was a 60 mile gravel race out of Marion Iowa and this was the second year I've raced it.  This marked the first time I'd won a race since 1999, so that was pretty exciting.

So what's next for me?  With CIRREM coming up next week I'm hoping to finish out the winter strong.  My best time for the course is about 5:25, but I'll be shooting for sub-five hours this year.  Hoping for another good one to close out the season.

Vision Questing

I'm packed up and ready to head to International Falls, MN tomorrow morning for my second running of the Arrowhead 135.  For those interested, you can follow my progress through one of the magical interweb portals below.  I can't promise much as far as updates go, but I'll try to throw out a few twits whenever I discover internet access.

Official race updates and time splits.

Arrowhead Facebook.

My Twitter handle: @10ftmidget

The race starts Monday morning at 7am and should finish for me sometime Tuesday afternoon or evening.  With any luck I'll regain some measure of coherence by Wednesday morning. Have a good weekend!

Off For Tuscobia

 Training run - photo by The Powergoat

Shoving off for Tuscobia in a few minutes.  I'll be doing the 150 mile bike flavor starting at 6am Saturday morning.  For those interested in following, here's a couple clickables to get you there.  Have a good weekend and enjoy the snow!

Live tracking

Facebook updates

Tuscobia website

Geeking on Gear

Partial gear check.

Sometimes it's almost as fun to get geeked out on the gear as it is to actually use it.  This is the mode I've been in the last couple weeks with Tuscobia and Arrowhead coming up.  I've been tweaking my clothing, gear and setup based on lessons learned from last year's races and current test runs and I'm liking how it's coming along.  I've ditched the panniers this year for a handlebar bag, which will be less kludgey and will force me to be more selective with my gear.  I still have to put my rear rack back on to hold my sleeping bag, and add my gas tank and feed bags to the mix, but otherwise I've got a decent shakedown of how I'm storing stuff.  A quick breakdown of my setup from tonight's test ride (not complete at this time):

Handlebar bag
- Bivy sack
- Self inflating matress (won't self inflate in the cold according to what I've read, but I can blow it up)
- Mid-weight merino wool long underwear
- Fleece pullover
- Wind vest
- Lobster gloves (might look at swapping these for mittens that fit over gloves)
- Down jacket
- Tuscobia Beanie

Frame bag
- 1 pint titanium pot
- Esbit stove (in pot)
- 12 Esbit tablets (in pot)
- Matches (in pot)
- Aluminum foil for wind screen (in pot)
- Light winter gloves
- Mid weight winter gloves
- Mid weight fleece balaclava
- Cold Avenger mask
- Glasses case
- Peanut butter (3000 calorie required minimum food)

Other bike gear
- Aero bars (handy for pushing a heavily loaded bike up steep hills)
- ATV bar mitts
- Bar ends (a must for me on flat bars)

Clothing (note: I was pretty overdressed for the temps that were in the mid teens.  This was intentional since I'm playing around with temperature regulation right now)
- Long sleeved, mid-weight base layer (synthetic)
- Long sleeve thermal jersey with full length zipper
- Mid-weight fleece with full length zipper
- Light balaclava
- Lightweight glove liners
- Bibbed shorts
- Lightweight, synthetic long underwear
- Soft shell pants with zippered leg vents and suspenders.  I'm really digging the suspenders.  Makes them comfy like bibbed shorts
- Mid-weight wool socks
- Insulted hunting boots sized 1.5 sizes larger than I normally wear for extra sock room
- Safety glasses
- Helmet

I was only a couple miles into my ride tonight before I had my top two layers almost completely unzipped and my leg vents open.  I figure this setup should be comfy at zero degrees and possibly down to -10F. With the extra layers I had on board, I figure I would have been good down to the low end of Arrowhead extremes, with the exception of my feet.  That may just be a matter of more socks, but worst case I have some overboots on the way that should get me down to those temps.

A Good Start

Halfway there.

  

With winter racing coming up and Trans Iowa on the calendar again, it's time once again to set my well intentioned goals that I have a habit of failing to follow through with.  So far I'm doing a lot better this year though.  My TI goal weight is 160lbs, which would be 20lbs lighter than I raced at this year.  Right now I'm on track to hit that by the end of the year, which is a couple months ahead of schedule.  Whoooo me!  On top of that my training is going better than it was at this time last year, and between that and the weight loss I'm starting to see real improvements.  

There's a downside though...  I'm kinda missing that extra fat in this colder weather.  Between the dieting and lower body fat I'm finding that I have to re-think my layers.  Last night over the course of an hour I couldn't manage to get warm despite doing hill intervals.  Temps were upper teens with high single digit north winds and I thought I had dressed well enough for it.  A mid weight base layer, heavy long sleeve jersey and windbreaker vest up top, lightweight tights over long underwear on the bottom.  Wool socks with my winter cycling shoes for the feet, mid weight ski gloves and a beanie rounded things out.  Last year that probably would have been fine after 10-15 minutes of warming up.  Not so much now.  Toes froze, fingers were right behind the toes, and my core was chilly at best.

Tonight I was determined to be warm, even if it meant sweating a bit more than I'd normally like.  I traded the light vest for an insulated soft shell vest, the tights made way for soft shell pants, I added some neoprene covers to the shoes and finished things off with my Cold Avenger mask.  Winds were slightly less and the temps were about 5 degrees warmer.  Much, much better.  The mask ended up coming off less than two miles in since it just wasn't working well with my helmet and glasses (need to work on that) and I was never cold during a 45 minute light spin.  Additionally, the vest and jersey both have full length zippers so temperature adjustments could have been made on a longer ride to minimize sweating.  The kit weighed a few ell-bees more, but it was worth it.  Now I'll just have to hope for some colder temps to adjust my lower temp clothing.

Practice, experience and such.  Can't have enough.

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