Save the date jerks...

Save the date! 

The best winter gravel adventure is coming up fast!!!

December 15, 2012
Start/finish @ Sunflower Bike Shop
9:00 am start
100k of your favorite Kansas crunchiness.
*There is a shorter route available that skips the Wellsville loop.

Course map here: http://www.mapmytri.com/routes/view/26131428

Get on it!!  Hope to see you there!

Peace and riding!!!

PS - Is it ever going to rain??  I honestly have had zero desire to go ride trails until it rains...a third trip in three years to the hospital because of dryness is not in my cards so I've been pussing out on ripping the trails up.  We can't even finish up trails at Roanoke cause there's no soil moisture...zero zilch nada.  It's bad.

Colavita Cross Country Challenge thank-yous

Two weeks ago we had a badass mountain bike race.  My front room and I are finally recovered.  After reflecting for a while it was truly amazing the quality of event we put on.  Dirt lovin' good times were had by everyone there.  The one complaint I got was that I only made medals for the kids and not everyone (and maybe a couple USAC infractions that our wonder official, Curtis Martell, let slide).  We had a great course, great scoring/registration, great prizes, great venue.  We were cleaned up and could have left the park before 1:00 pm if the last few of us hadn't stayed to take it all in for a few minutes; most other MTB races aren't even finished by 1:00 pm and we had all awards out, the entire course markings picked up, all the trash in the right spots, and it literally looked like no one had been out there.  After expenses we ended up donating quite a chunk to the Trail Masons for continued work at WYCO (and CAT 1/SS/Marathon got paid and paid decently well, which is also unheard of for a local MTB race).  You all may not know, but the Trail Mason's master plan with WYCO parks calls for over 30 miles of trails like those to go all around the lake.  They have built the current 6 miles with less than $1500.  The race $$$ will go a long way to getting their next 2.5 mile section and more opened soon.  It is because of our great team and volunteer group that we brought it.  Everyone on this list helped clean up afterwards too!!!  Special thank you to the following for their contributions:

Thank you to UFD and the 118 racers that braved the heat!!!

Britton: Parisi coffee, Celler Rat gift certificates, numbers, prizes, Volker Bikes sponsorship, Tallgrass beer.  BK's the best.

John W: Food!!!  Amazing as always sir!

Ann Pai: Registration/Scoring.  

Venasa: Registration/Scoring.  Venasa and Ann held the reg/scoring down!!!  Without these ladies things would have been lost.

Kris Presnell: Reg/Scoring.  Irreplaceable.  Thanks, Kris!

Dan O.  Reg/scoring, finding pappy when his head was not good.  Thanks DanO!

Michael Ellis - Registration/scoring

Justin Bay - Registration/scoring.  Justin and Michael were part of our indispensable reg/scoring team.  You guys literally carried our event.  So critical in MTB races and all the more difficult with our number cluster.

Jake S: Parking duty, reg/scoring, Door to Door Organics gift certificates.  Jake also helped with pretty much anything asked of him.

Roger W: Water hoses and water!, chinese hats, course markings Saturday morning.  And he won the marathon race, amazing.

Erik Elving: Registration/Scoring, water hoses, Applebee's Gift Certificates, general badassery.  Erik, I can't even remember everything you helped with, which is nothing new, thank you!

Josh B: Parking duty.  Critical with what we were working with.

Jon Sink: Parking duty.  Showed up, took a piece of paper without me saying much, and it worked.  

Levon: Parking duty, staple gun, course marking Saturday morning, final clean up.  Thanks bro!

Adam K: Parking duty, Port-A-Potties, final clean up.  We didn't have shit everywhere.  That's a win!

David N: Parking duty, course marking Saturday morning, final clean up 

Nate S: Midwest Mountain Bike Patrol (MMBP), water hoses.  Thank you Nate and MMBP for your assistance, helping Pappy out, and for getting all our course markings after the races!!!

Curtis Martell - Our chillin' official.

Andy Schuette - UFD results, UFD webmaster/promoter, and USAC results

Cliff Jones - Co-promoter.  Cliff did as much or more work than I did getting this event ready.  He personally weedeated every single inch of our course, designed the race layout with Shane (really designed the whole system), hooked up the county permitting process, helped me mark the course Friday night, led group rides/race preview rides, got us zip ties in the morning, helped reg/scoring, did MMBP, helped with final clean up, etc etc etc.  He was truly the co-promoter of this event and it could have not gone off without Cliff or any of the rest of your contributions.

Finally, we gotta shout out to our sponsors.  Nothing is free/cheap without them :)

Trail Masons!

Wyandotte County Parks and Recreation!

Pot Pie!

Door to Door Organics!

Celler Rat!

Applebee's!

Parisi Coffee!

Colavita Pasta and EVOO!

and of course,

Volker Bicycles!!!

I know I forgot a lot...

We do it all again in 6 weeks for Manion's Cyclocross baby!!!  Then Colavita Cup in November!

thank you all again.  After it's been 2 weeks, I can say, yes, I do want to promote a race again :)  ...one thing is for sure, C4 will definitely be back at WYCO!!!

--brett

PS:  Since this is super long, here are some of the upcoming MTB opportunities still left:

Swope Dush Dash, A group night ride, Swope Park Trails, 8.11.12

Cruise the Blues 5 hour endurance solo/team race, Glen Elder Kansas, 8.25.12

24 Hours of Iowa solo/team race, Boone Iowa, 9.8/9.12 (I WANT TO DO THIS AS A TEAM!!!)

Slaughter Pen Jam (all disciplines), Bentonville Arkansas, 9.8/9.12 - or this would be cool too :)

Sac River 6/12 hour endurance solo/team race, Springfield Missouri, 9.8.12

Tour de Lizard, Ark City Kansas, 9.9.12 XC/Marathon, UFD West #8

Northwest Arkansas Championships (all disciplines), 9.15.12, West Fork Arkansas (Devil's Den)

Tall Oak Challenge 6 hour solo/team race, Jeff City Missouri, 9.23.12

Rhett's Run, Columbia Missouri, 9.30.12 XC/Marathon, UFD West #9, Series Championship

Castlewood Race Two XC/Endurance, UFD East #10/UFD Series Finale

Burning at the Bluff 6/12 hour solo/team race, Potosi Missouri, 10.13.12

Berryman Epic, Steelville Missouri, 10.27.12

Attila the Hun XC/marathon, 11.18.12, Little Rock Arkansas