Iceman 2011

Posted by joel on November 13, 2011

2011 marked my second attempt at competing in the [Iceman]. The mountain bike race consists of a 30 miles point-to-point between Kalkaska and Traverse City, MI. Since my attempt last year involved a pretty hard crash I was looking to improve upon my performance from the previous.

The journey from Wausau, WI to Traverse City is an ordeal in and of itself. With roughly 9 hours of windshield time it was nice to meet up with a large group of Title Town Flyers to pass the time. A big thank you goes out to Shawn Hauser for coordinating the trip and facilitating lodging arrangements!

The morning of race-day saw temperatures hovering in the mid-30′s and beautiful blue skies. My warm-up was a bit brisk but overall my dress fit the occasion quite nicely. Since I was able to get a halfway decent finish time the previous year I was seeded in wave 4 – a much more appropriate starting position than my first year. Overall the course conditions were excellent with no snow or ice to speak of. For the start of my wave there was a helicopter that hovered above – way cool! Once our wave started the pace was as I expected. I slowly made my way toward the front 5-10 riders and was able to maintain this position for quite at least the first 15 miles.

Once we hit about mile 20 I could tell that my lack of riding (which has given way to marathon training, Disney 2012) started to set in. The hill climbs seemed to be more of a struggle than normal and I felt my pace and power slip away. As the race continued past Anita’s Hill I knew my form was not optimal for a top-5 age group placing. I would estimate that I lost approximately 30-40 places over the remainder of the 10 miles of the race. Furthermore, I ended up having to hike-a-bike for two hills.

My overall placing was roughly 250th (and 10th in age), well off a quality placing I would expect had I continued to train after Chequamegon. Here the full [results] and the [detail] from my Garmin.