Iceman Went

For those that have not done this race, it is one of the more well run races I have participated in. From packet pick up to getting the results posted, things seemed to flow remarkable well given the number of people. 17 years of experience probably helps.

Congratulations to Ron on a great ride in the singlespeed class!!! He laid it out like there was no tomorrow.

My results were mediocre. I was 23rd in my class, met my goal but it was nothing exciting. In retrospect, I do not feel like I pushed hard enough coming off the climbs and didn't bury people after I passed them on the climb. My biggest problem was not winning the race to the start line. Clearly there is a lot of strategy when you are dealing with about 200 riders in a wave. I ended up starting from about the 5th row. The most successful people at the start rolled up at the back of the wave in front of ours and then just sat there while they started, leaving them at the front of our start. Lesson learned.

Now for the reality check of this race. Shouldn't there be some sort of minimum percentage of singletrack required for a race to be called a mountain bike race? I don't think there was more than 2 miles of single track out of the 28.5 total. A time trial conducted on dirt roads ought to have its' own name instead of mountain bike race, perhaps a Dirt Time Trial? There needs to be more technical terrain to maintain my interest. I am impressed that there is such a cult following of this race. The people that run it have clearly done their marketing homework and have gotten people to buy into what is for the most part a very dull mountain bike race. It strikes me that there is enough terrain in northern Lower Michigan to put together some great long singletrack race possibilities. Would you be able to run 2000 people on it? Good question and not one for me to answer. If you could the race to the start line would be even more important, but the riding would be a whole lot more interesting.

My apologies to Andy Brown - I think I called him 'Dave' after the race - not thinking clearly at that moment.

Idle thoughts:

What is the name of a group of turkeys?

I hate burning the roof of my mouth - not only does it hurt at the time, it is annoying for days to come.

I took my camera to the race and never got it out, maybe next time.