Iceman 2023: Mistakes Were Made

 It would appear that my blog has become a defecto race report on various events.  The last race of the year per usual in the Mitten State is the Iceman Cometh.  I can't remember if this is 7,8 or 9 Icemans.  Most blend together into a blur.  There was Mudman, several Niceman and an occasional lived to the billing Iceman.  

2023 wasn't warm, but with sun shining and no rain, temps in the upper 40's, it will be remembered as a Niceman.  The race where a lot of mistakes were made.  

I had shifting problems going into the race.  If I had ridden my bike a lot more before the race, perhaps it was something that could have been sorted out.  As is, I rode my gravel bike and indoor trainer.  I assumed the problem would be the same thing that has cropped up in the past.  It wasn't.  Don't Assume.  Test your race gear over and over.  

This lead to shifting getting stuck around every ten min dropping to every 2-3 min much later in the race.  Frustrating.

I had planned to use a water bottle that I had used with my bike every ride I had used it, and also use my USWE back pack that holds about 50oz of water.  The day of packing I decided to leave my back pack home and take a larger water bottle I have used on most of my gravel rides.  

15 min into the race I realized I couldn't physically take the bottle out of its cage.  It was locked in like a vise grip.  To drink I had to get off the bike and yank it out.  Frustrating.

This was my only nutrition.  Calories in the bottle.  Test your gear!  Don't change your plan without testing it.  Carry an emergency gel or something like that.  

Now my biggest takeaway from the race besides test your gear is how you deal with problems.  Monday morning I was working with someone and they inherently asked how the race went.  Somewhere in the conversation, I came to the epiphany of why didn't I just take the water bottle out of its cage and put it in my back jersey pocket.  

The answer was I became fixated on the problem, instead of brain storming a solution.  Tough lesson learned, but a valuable one.  Seek to be a solution oriented thinker.  

Besides the disappointing race time and frustrating mechanicals, riding your bike in the woods and hanging with your friends can never truly be disappointing.  Always grateful when the opportunity presents itself.  

Test your gear, seek solutions, pedal on.  

Lumberjack 100 Race Report

 I came for a challenge, it over delivered.

I never thought I would ride my bike for 11 hours.  Welcome to Lumberjack 100.  The premier 100 mile mountain bike race in the state of Michigan.  3 loops in the beautiful Manistee National Park.  It was a perfect day to ride a bike....a very long time.

At the start of the year I picked out 3 races between the spring opener Barry Roubaix and the fall closer Iceman: Black Fork gravel in Ohio, Lumberjack 100 in Michigan, and third, Last Best Ride in Montana.  

I have been riding a decent amount this year.  Enough that I had some hubris going into the race.  Maybe it has been around my friends and patients lives so long, that you start to feel a bit non challant about the race.  Yea, it will be hard, but not like hard hard, you know.  It humbled me 2 hours in.  I was already cramping.  Cramping?  This was something I thought I had conquered with adequate training, a thing of the past.  But there it was before I had even hit the first aid station.  

A key element of racing bigger events or any endurance event is learning to not project your future feelings on your current situation.  It is very easy to say, man I'm hurting this much now, in two hours it's going to be way worse.  Stay focused on the present, the future changes.  

Stick to your nutrition plan.  I think this saved me.  Part of me thinks I was really undereating, drinking going into the race.  Some work/life stuff came up that had me extra busy leading into the race and I think I payed a price on the first lap.  Eating and drinking consistently, I actually felt the best on my last lap.  Be Disciplined in your eating and drinking.

Whenever I came to a point that I just was tired of riding, I would hit a spot of amazingly pretty single track through tall pines, with the sunlight hitting just right, that made it feel like you were riding your bike in some place magical.  When the legs got really crampy a fast stretch of rolling gravel that had a canopy of tall trees making tunnels, guiding you along.  When your mind started to wonder, a hundred yards of green moss lined trail pushed you on.  Allow natures magic to unfold. 

The whole day, something hurt, but it was always changing.  Quad cramp, shifted to an adductor cramp, shifted to a hip flexor, shifted to a left side, always moving, searching replenishing, back and forth.  I found myself in awe that my body could find fiber angles to keep moving.  To keep figuring out new ways to pedal the same crank.  Your body is Amazing, be thankful. 

On some weird side notes, you have a lot of thoughts pedaling a bike for 11 hours.  I hit hard on lap one,  head, shoulder elbow.  I popped up and found my brain saying no biggie.  Something I started in like 8th or 9th grade after taking big hit in football, it was a mantra all through college.  My body seemed to remember getting hit and my brain reverted back to 25 years ago.  

My first work out tape was an Army Ranger cadence.  When I started running in the woods with a walkman as a middle school kid,  I would hum along to these.  Sometime along 8 hours in the words and cadence started coming back again.  How weird I remember thinking that I would remember something like that.  

The people at the aid stations, the Unpaved crew that puts on the race, the setting, all where amazing.  If you want a challenge, this is a great one.  Every lap, will teach a lesson, every lap unlocks something different.  Some things can only be learned through time and effort,  Lumberjack is a great teacher.