ICEMAN Came!

Here's a recap of the ICEMAN adventure. It was a fantastic time! We left Muncie at 1pm with Jeff, Mark, myself and all are bikes and gear loaded in Jeff's Subaru. We rolled into the hotel, which was a 4-star or better hotel about 7:30pm and checked in. We found out there were 4 restaurants in the hotel so we found one with a pasta buffet and chowed down.
After laying out our clothes for the next day we made quick use of the huge garden bath with jets...separately of course...and went to bed.
We rose at 6:30 and down stairs we went to eat a breakfast buffet. Then we packed up our bags and bikes and drove 20 minutes to the start line to get Mark ready for the race. He started at 9:30 while Jeff and I got to wait until 10am. There were about 60 waves going out every 5 minutes! Yeah...that 3000+ people and half a day to get them all out on the course.
Now for a race review.
The weather was ok. We expected much worse. it was 40 degrees and spitting rain with overcast skies. Approaching the start line there were about 60 other racers in my category so I nudged myself up to the front of the line so I could get a good start. And I did, hitting the trail at about 5th place. I quickly moved up to 3rd place as I tucked in behind two other guys as we made some separation from the pack. about 4 miles into the 27 mile race we started catching previous waves and we passed a LOT of them! At around mile 5 the two guys in front of me passed a couple people and I had to wait a few seconds to do the same and when it was time I yelled out "passing on the right" and the kid in front of me jumped out in front of me to pass at the same time. He kept doing this 3 times as if he and I were racing eachother and he didn't want me to get in front. But he was in a totally different age group! Anyway, one time he did this lead to me slamming on my breaks, going up into a front wheelie and endoing over my bars. And that led to a woman crashing into me! We were all ok but I lost to two guys I was pacing off of and was determined to pass that little jerk of a racer......sorry.... he was young and didn't know better I guess. Anyway I passed him w/o saying a word and made it my goal to catch the two leaders.
I didn't ever find them again. But I knew I'd put a gap on the group behind and was sitting in third place. So I just tried to ride hard and keep my momentum. It wasn't hard to do. The trail was sandy but the rain had packed in down and made it quite tacky! Was regularly riding at 17-18mph and bombing the downhills which had large portions of loose sand at the bottoms. But I found that the faster you hit the sandy spots the better you got through them. The hills were not much to talk about until the last 9 miles or so. The started to get steep. Not to long but steep. Most people were walking up them while pushing their bikes. Anita's Hill was one of those such hills. I was able to ride all of them w/o walking and even had an old man cheer me to the top of Anita's Hill and then push me by my seat over the crest! I felt like I was in some french road race or something!
All was well with less than 1 mile left to go and sitting in 3rd place, counting my winnings ahead of time, when a rider passed me. Now no one had passed me all day and so I had to ask the question, "Hey, what age group are you....?" "Huh?" he yelled. "Are you 25-29?" Waiting a few seconds to consider his answer he says, "yeah I am...are you?" And then I knew there would be a sprint to the finish. As though to show no competition between the two of us I said, "Yeah I am...and we've got two guys ahead of us.." My diversion tactic didn't work I guess cause he took off and so I took off on his tail until we hit another steep hill. I saw him really slow down in the middle of the hill so I attacked not know if this was the last hill or if there were more. I got ahead of him by about half of bike length but then he fought back and pulled ahead and the strain was too much for me. I couldn't catch him. He beat me by 8 seconds. It was a fun fun finish for the day!
Here are some pics from the trip.
Post race activities included sipping some local Michigan brews and playing Guitar Hero in the Meijer kids trailer! Oh, and results! Jeff got 13th and Mark was like 60th out of 75... yeah... but he got a 91% accuracy score on guitar hero which was unprecedented that day!