I was going to write a somewhat lengthy post about this year’s Iceman Cometh Challenge race and put together some bullet points about the race for things that I wanted to cover, but I can’t bring myself to flesh it out into a complete post. Instead I’ll just post the bullet points themselves, expanded a bit to be solid on their own. It was a very fun race, a nice day, but not eventful in any way that makes me want to write a lot. I simply enjoyed myself, saw lots of friends, and had a great weekend with Danielle:
Here’s those bullet points:
- Wet sand.
- Large, infrequent mud puddles.
- Raining as we left Traverse City, but stopped on the way to Kalkaska.
- Really friendly people: no problems with passes either way.
- I thought my HR monitor was reading high, but it was either consistently off by a few tens of percent (never seen this before) or I was able to ride harder than expected for extended periods of time.
- My official result: 14 1374 Steve Vigneau Shelby Townshi MI 9:59:35 10:48:13 2:19:11
- Four minutes faster (would have been doable) and I’d have been in the top 10. Oh well.
- Started in Wave 9, almost missed my start as I was using the toilet when everyone was lining up. Took longer than expected when I got done 9 was moving up to the start area.
- Chain drop behind cassette on a steep climb when downshifting somewhere after Anita’s Hill. Unsure why: sand? Can’t reproduce.
- Not spent at end, could have pushed more.
- YouTube video of my finish: link.
- Strava data: link.
- Congrats to people who won things: Joe Seidl, Brad Lako, Alex Gonzalez, John Osgood
- Person who died: http://kolotc.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/bigger-than-a-race-for-ken/
- Someone got hit by a car riding away from the finish area on the road. No word on their condition.
- Foods consumed: ~2 hours of Infinit (from a 3 hour bottle), ~40oz bottles of water in pack, caffeinated gel before hand.
- Clothing: Pearl Izumi boots, tall wool socks, plain black thermal knickers, Under Armor thermal base layer, summer jersey, Pearl Izumi AmFib gloves, cycling cap, helmet, glasses.
- Photos of me: MarathonFOTO.com.
The photo above? That’s just of some random sand still on my bike a week after the race. There’s so much wet sand and grit on my bike that it really needs a drivetrain cleaning before I ride it again. It was okay during the race, but as I’d switch to a less-used gear combo there’d be a few minutes of scraping sounds as the sand worked its way off the cogs.