dirty kanza recap

well not much to say, we only made it about 90 miles before I pulled out like a bitch. The heat stroke from a few weeks ago obviously was lingering around a bit...

So Clay and I head down to Emporia at about 5:45 Friday night, roll into the Granada Theatre, Emporia around 7:30, get our packets, grab some jimmy johns, attend rider meeting, go to the hotel. Get our shit unpacked and ready for the morning and I head to Braums for a bacon cheeseburger and milkshake. Anyone who has followed this blog for awhile or knows me well, or traveled with me to Arkansas, Oklahoma, or Texas, knows that I am a braums freak. That shit is amazing, and of course, it didn't disappoint.

Clay and I set 3 alarms and finally get to bed around 12:30ish. not good when the race starts at 6:00 am and our alarms go off at 5:00. Of course you can imagine what happens next...

I wake up and clay is yelling fuck dude wake up, we have 15 minutes to be to the race. Look at the clock, 5:43, really not good. Clay is supposed to do the first leg, and he's had no breakfast and no morning shit. I am expecting a call anytime during the next 3-4 hours, but it never happens, awesome! Anyway, Clay is the very last person to roll out, literally, sprinting to catch up with the huge pack leaving town. I get back to the hotel, get out shit and head for cassody. I feel like shit cause I had horrible sleep, and am not feeling any food, but manage to stuff 2 mini powdered doughnuts down from the continental breakfast. Get to cassody and the gas station can be best describes as a circus. unfortunately this circus had one bathroom for EVERYONE. men and women. I felt bad for the ladies there, it was not pretty. So I find Tim Greene and Cliff Straub, set up camp with them and we wait for people to start coming in. We take guesses as to when the first will be there and I say 9:15. Happens to be Gunnar Shogrens on a single speed. I find out later this dude is 49 years old, running a 45x19!!!!!!!!!!! gearing (that is stupid), and is a former masters mtb and cx national champ. Well it showed. Mark Cole rolls in second 4 minutes behind and says that Gunnar is absolutely throwing it down, as in like dropping the dudes with gears. Cornbread, Joe Fox, and a few others roll in and say the same thing about shogren and that the pace is way too hot to start. His wife Betsy rolls in at 6th overall at the first checkpoint (and she finised 9th overall on the day!, 1st woman obviously), before eventual winner Dan Hughes who had a nasty sidewall tear on a brand new $100 tire. Absolutely amazing display of cycling by these west virginia folk.

so on with the story, Clay gets in right before 10 am and I take off on leg 2, which is 44 miles heading damn near straight west and into the wind. For some reason, my dumbass starts hammering it hard passing probably 60+ riders and eventually catching Tim and Cliff about 20 miles in (they had left about 30 min before me at the last checkpoint). When I caught Tim and Cliff they had made a wrong turn with a huge group and we were about 5 miles off course. Ugggghhhh! turn around and head back to the right road: minimum maintenance! a true dk road, finally! and it lived up to the hype. The creek bottoms came, and came, and came some more, then the south facing climbs started. Power from my legs started getting drained real quick, and the clif electrolite drinks I had were disappearing just as quick. 4 full bottles and 38-40 miles later I was completely out of liquid, and still 10+ miles from the next checkpoint. found a shade tree and called clay. Secured a ride and officially pulled out of the dk. I then proceeded to vomit up probably 2.5 bottles of liquid that was just sitting in my stomach while waiting for clay to get there. He did and we supplied water/gatorade to probably 10 other guys who were in my same situation. It was crazy how many people were completely out of liquids and/or laying down on the side of the roads. It was stupidly, stupidly hot and the 20+ mph wind didn't help. I'd venture to say that second leg from 10 am-1 pm when I was out was 94-99* with 15-25 mph south winds and 40+ gusts. not good when I'd had a heat stroke less than a month ago. oh well.

if this race was held in cooler weather or even later in the summer (so we could acclimate to the heat for a couple few weeks) I think i and a lot of other people would have been a lot better off. Early june is a crap shoot with Kansas weather, it can either be mid 80s and gorgeous or pushing 100* after having been literally cool spring weather the week before. The heat did a lot of people in and rightly so, it was nasty out there.

so dk is over. I may try tackling it again someday, but probably not. I'm thinking more like metric century/6-8 hour stuff is my calling. 3 hours is too intense, 12 is too long. Stuff like the Berryman Epic, Ouachita Challenge, Syllamo's Revenge, Farmhouse Classic, RIM, Spoke Pony, etc. And I miss me some CX racing. I really do love that shit! Mainly just because of the scene, but the racing is badass too.

I am ready to finally concentrate on mtb stuff for awhile. Singletrack has been yelling my name for 2 months now and trail can't build itself. gravel will be off the radar until farmohuse classic and/or unless it downpours for a week straight. I love it, but it's still a road and not a trail :)

peace and riding!

dirty kanza...

...epic fail. I'm in the loft in KC and the leaders are probably 2-3 hours from finishing still. you do the math.

more to come later.

peace and riding!

leaving for dk...

...in about 15 minutes. no camera, so look for a write-up soon, maybe some crappy cell phone pics if anything really pops out at me.

swope phase 4 opening tomorrow. details on the swope blog.

landahl race next week.

peace and riding!

new swopeage...

Official map is on the blog now...here's a few extras for your pleasure.

peace and riding!!!

swope phase 4 opening!!!

The Swope Dirt crew will be having a phase 4 ribbon cutting ceremony at 9 am Saturday June 4 with City leaders. This will be the official opening of Swope Phase 4, it will complete the Rancho D-Lux loop, and add an additional 2.6 miles of sweet ripping singletrack at camp Lake of the Woods for ~10 miles of trail now!!! Come on out and join the trail hermits (Scott/Craig/Travis) for some good times and ripping new Kansas City trail!

I don't know much more than that, but look for an announcement on the trail blog and/or from the trail hermits.

peace and riding!!!

dirty kanza this week

been doing a lot of this the past few weeks to taper down and keep the legs fresh...I have it down to damn near 40 miles or urban gravel...its badass. john w. documented a day that he joined me.

http://theseatedclimb.blogspot.com/2011/05/poachin.html

Dirty Kanza is in 4 days. Clay and I have decided to alternate at every checkpoint, thank god. I think we should do pretty well.

re-cap of that next week. maybe I can find a camera someplace this week...

peace and riding!!!

roanoke update...

meeting with city very soon...more to come...construction should start within a couple few-ish weeks.

dirty kanza next week...i haven't "real" ridden in a week. Real long ridden in 2. oh well.

peace and riding!!!

working it...

Tuesday was a garden reconstruction on the Westside after doing some work out in Lawrence all last weekend. It was awesome.

Also swung by the UMKC garden to check on the 800ish plants we have there. yum. lettuce is ready...$0.25 a head, organic and local. let me know if you want some, seriously, we have a ton.

Yesterday I went to swope to do some work. Got out the Phase 4 and about shit myself cause a fricking ton had been done...apparently the Trail Hermits are in the middle of another "30 days of pain"...Phase 4 will be open by June 4th, National Trails Day, unless it rains every day. So I started to clear some corridor for the last part of that section, and got into something nasty that had my allergies going fucking crazy. 2 hours of that was enough and I went out to the hydrant, stripped to my skivvies and half bathed myself in the ice cold water to try and get whatever was on me off of me. My eyes were hella bloodshot and itchy, stuffy nose, little rash popping on my legs, not good. I had been having allergy symptoms before, but being out in the middle of the woods cutting trees and removing crap plants got to me a little too hard. Decided I still needed to ride (of course, haha) rode phase 4 out and back once, then looped the short track, did phase 3 west-->east then looped phase 1/2 counterclockwise with another phase 4 out and back...finished with the dining hall/pool connection and decided to call it cause I was tired, itchy and still couldn't breathe.

Phase 4 is going to make swope a whole new world. Less than 3 weeks and you'll be able to loop the whole hill. Phase 4 also has a few hella grinder climbs. not like the short steep ones or crazy switchbacks like the rest of swope, long grinding false flat single track climbs, where you don't even realize you're climbing until you ride it the other direction and you are FLYING. Like scary fast going down a couple spots. One you're gonna have to either air it big (either way :) or mash brakes hard and roll easy over the hump...not gonna have a choice. Rancho is going to be the flow master once this is open...I can't wait!

Trying to work some more on the Roanoke Trails Master Plan...it's gonna be good! Ground breaking is moving back a bit, but I need to make sure everything is covered and covered well before we start moving dirt.

Peace and riding!!!

amigos...

So awhile ago I said I was going to showcase some friends once a week...this is the second time, ok whatever...

This is Levon


This is Adam


They're great guys. Unfortunately they're growing up (shed a little tear) and won't be living in midtown any longer. Where am I going to go to bum pabst and watch cycling replays or always sunny? Or call at the last minute for urban mtb rides? These cats are about as cool as they come, miles davis/john coltrane cool.



I'm sure you've seen them around town. Levon ran Street Cred this past winter with some help from Adam, and rides around midtown all the time. Adam is racing about every weekend, mostly getting smoked by his lady Racer X, and writes the fantastic something classic in kc blog. I'm sure you've read it, it's kind of a big deal.

If you see these jerks, say hi, they'll probably give you a beer if they have one, and that's never bad.




peace and riding!!!

sunday sunday sunday...(trail/gravel in lawrence anyone?)

My boy John Williams is having a gravel party down in middle Kansas this weekend...check it out: http://gravelgrinders.blogspot.com/

and by little I mean 131 miles of the flint hills. After my little episode last Saturday I am going to miss his. Instead I plan on doing some gravel and river trail around Lawrence this Sunday if anyone would like to join me. Shooting for around 75 miles probably with some good climbing. I'd usually pimp this a little harder but I don't want to take anything away from JW's ride cause I know his will be amazing, and I wish I was capable of joining, but I'd better hold off going too hard for another week or two. So call me, e-mail me, or respond here with a good time for you and we'll get it going. 10-11 am ish? noon-ish? these are good times for me hahhah, I'm such a lazy ass.

peace and riding!!!