Friday, February 29, 2008

The Nitty Gritty Details

Registration - Colville Park 6:30 am - 7:15 am the day of the race

Race Start - 7:30 am

Zumbro Falls Checkpoint (Time cut-off) - 2:00 pm

Goodhue Checkpoint (no Time cut-off... suggested cut-off) - 4:30 pm

Finish (Colville Park, Red Wing) - 7:30 pm

You'll get the second set of race notes/directions at the Zumbro Falls checkpoint. If you don't get there by 2:00 you won't get the notes.

Hope you've been able to get out and train....

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Road Conditions

Not much to say, just wanted to inform that at least for the moment the roads are in pretty good condition to ride. A bit slick in spots (ice) but generally firm grippy conditions. Cross bike would be ideal this weekend.... will continue to update the conditions as winter's icy grip might begin to yield to spring.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Bike Set-up

Hopefully everyones' training is going swell. Some of you might be interested in the set-up that I would use if I were doing this race (note: many of you probably have much more experience with these types of things, plus EVERYONE is different so there are quite a few grains of salt). Mainly I wanted to get something else at the top of the page so people know we're still here. Here goes:



For most of my longer gravel road excursions I use my mountain bike, which happens to be a steel 29er built by Walt at Waltworks a few years back. It started out life with a suspension fork and derailleurs, but then I lost brain cells and decided to simplify. Rigid fork and an ENO hub solved that problem. Gearing for the roads around here is a solid 34-16.

I like the hand/wrist position offered by the Mary bars. For longer rides/races I'll even slap on some barends to the inner portion of the bars for an added hand position. With some creative bar-taping that gives three unique hand positions, which for me is a good thing.

Tires for me tend to gravitate to semi-slick mountain tires ahead of cross tires. My favorite set-up is a Kenda Karma 1.9 in front, and a Bontrager Jones XR 1.8 (Front version) in the rear pumped up to maybe 55-60 psi.

Nice blinky red tail light and a couple little blinky white lights in the front are a standard gravel road accessory (front and rear lights - can be tiny and blinky - are required for the 'Rök). For incredibly long and hot rides I will throw a couple of Two Fish water bottle cages onto my fork legs to up my water bottle carrying capacity to 4 bottles (I don't like having tons of weight on my back).

I hope to get out on some of the roads on Saturday with the studs on. Maybe I'll post some pictures.