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.