Welcome to mid twenties. population, me

In celebration of me surviving twenty four years with half a brain we did an AA->poto->AA ride on mountain bikes. Though my birthday was on Monday, its hard to squeeze in a 3-4hr ride followed by copious amounts of beer without upsetting the work life balance. Naturally it was pushed to the nearest Saturday. Meeting at 2pm 8/16 we started off by ogling at Alan's new rig:

Completely untested and new we were breaking all the rules (never ride an untested rig long distances or in races)…but hey, rules are meant to be broken. So we rolled on.


Took us about 57minutes on the road (sorry no dirt) to get to the trail head. We had geared up for an "easier ride" but Mr.John Heft begged to differ with our 17-22mph pace on the road. Paul took the lead out of the gate at the poto trail head. He quickly disappeared into the distance. Nothing new, Paul just goes one speed at poto: fast. Alan couldn’t get his new rig to shift and was otb with me. We regrouped every now and again at points on the trail chatting it up as an excuse to slug back more water.

We met an interesting DNR employee who got to sit in a lawn chair and just tell people a parking lot was full. Where do I sign up for this job? Heft opted for the shorter 15mile loop while Paul, myself, and Alan went on for the full loop. We stuck together till the last paved road crossing, and then we all hit our own strides. Eventually hitting the parking lot after . John was kind enough to reserve us a spot on the beech so we could consume flat soda and enjoy the view. I made the mistake in partaking in the American tradition of a hot dog. It was so good I got to taste it the whole way home!


On the way back about we identified Alan's shifting problem as a stiff link (to go with his other two stops: lose skewer, lose headset). Seems SRAM chains have been plagued with stiff links recently. Anyone else notice this? After a few minutes of messing with it we back on the road. The way back was quite a bit faster with periods of 24-27mph. The tailwind helped quite a bit. Paul decided to work on his tan lines a bit also:


Ride Time: 3:31:14
Ride Distance: 58.99 miles
Beers Consumed: ~8.3

Upon return we drank a few brews right in front of Alan's house sitting on the curb. I'm sure the neighbors loved this….



After showering up and it was time to hit up the bars in AA. Grizzly peaks for foodage (mmmm pulled pork sandwich) and an eight beer (5oz ea) sampler. Paul in his competitive nature naturally finished first, Heft second, me in third, and Alan with assistance from Paul was DFL. If you wanted me to recount the complex flavors of each beer good luck…Next up to bat was Ann Arbor Brew Co. followed by Ashley's. Even Mr Stephen Cain of UofM cycling showed:

(This is a rare sighting at best. Drink it in)

Now it's Monday and I'm officially 24. Miller High Life anyone?


(that's March 2008 in TN - good stuff)

Ore To Shore v2.0

that's my buddy from CO, read below for a nice explanation of that.....

We wake up at 730ish to get ready to race. race gun start time was 9:45am. Mid way through packing up a torrential down pour starts in Marquette. Anyone who has raced in sand knows rain is GREAT pre-race. This is not the case when it’s 50F there, so it’s a catch-22. Race fast in the cold, or race in slow in the dry heat. The rain stopped in Marquette after about 15min but followed us to the start. It proceeded to rain right until 30min before the start. This was unexpected. The radar led us to believe it would pass before the race, we got there sans base layers to cold wet rain. Not a good warm up by any standards. A mental note for any future race is to always bring a bag with back up layers in it. Anyway…Alan and I tooled around and did a rough warm up. No one really wanted to get too wet so busting around on the pavement was limited. The weather parted and dried just before the start and things looked up. The pack was definitely smaller than 2007 by about 100-200 riders.

When the gun went off it was nutty but Alan and I managed to stay top 20 part of the pack till the first climb.

Alan proceeded to pull away at the first major grass climb about 2 miles in. I went into smart mode and listened to my legs. I let the top 15-20 guys go and started finding groups of people to pick off or work with. Granted listening to my legs got me shelled back quite a bit more than I had liked. About 10 miles in I finally found my grove after a rough section of gravel about a half mile long. Anyone who has ridden this race knows it as the two level ore pellet ride parallel to the train tracks. It’s famous for its fun crashes as people try to switch between the two levels of gravel. I heard many a crash behind me as I was recovering. I’d guess as they went to pass me. After that it was alternating busting ass, pulling back a bit to recover, then busting ass. Figured I was sitting around 40th place at that point before the dreaded baby head sized hike a bike rock climb.

A little bit down about it since my goal was top 20. So I sewed it up. I got help in the form of an enemy from last year. A guy from CO who i rubbed tires with and almost fought (his choice not mine). He had also called me fat and smelly(yes this was because of the famous state jersey). We exchanged apologies and proceeded to work together for the next 10-15 miles getting a big group together for the roadie section of the course. Probably had a pack of 20 guys together there which is not normal for a mountain bike race. Few guys did most of the work (me included). The likes of Terry Ritter just sat on being leeches. At about 10 miles from the end we were in a nice grove dragging the remainder 15 people from our road pack through the woods trying to pick off as many people as we could. At this point I was out of GU and coming up on the end of my 100oz of water.

We started meeting the stragglers of the soft rock group at this point. Unfortunately being third wheel in a draft line has it’s advantages: you catch accelerations faster and work less, and its disadvantages: you have zero reaction time to pending crashes. We passed one un lucky soft rock guy who got spooked and took me out, and not to dinner. Laying on the ground in a fetal position a Cycle-To-Fitness rider was kind enough to show me how his shoe felt on my ribs. After I was out from under the hooves of the cattle I got up and tried to jump back on the bike...but the pack was now out of sight. Being so close from the end it was NOT a good spot to lose the draft train. Finally catching the pack a mile or two later near the deepest sand pit the two straggling riders biffed in the pit letting me take a nice leisurely 5mph pace into the pit of death. I also biffed as a result of my slow speed. Getting back up I put the pedal to the medal. I only caught the remaining five stragglers of my draft pack 1mile to go. I rolled in at 39th overall and 35th in men’s shaving about 17min off my previous years time. Shockingly only 2 minutes behind alan….and 9 places back.

Trails-Edge Results:
Alan Antonuk 2:49:40 26th overall, 24th men geared, 1st male 20-24
Adam York 2:51:26 39th overall, 35th men geared, 3rd male 20-24
Jon Heft 3:17:51 153th overall, 122nd men geared, 28th male 35-39

more pics here on Alan's Picasa account.

more prospectives from the race here on the trails-edge blog.