The relay and solo open group all started together as we headed up into the woods about 1:00 PM. I was about mid pack as everyone settled into the single track. There is only enough enough room on the trail for one person wide so passing is difficult. I still managed to pass a few people.  About a third of way into the 2 miles my toe caught a root and I fell flat on my forearm and side. Two people passed me as one of them asked if I was okay. I popped back up embarrassed, scraped and a little bloody. I continued on.

I made the stream crossing with just a few jumps. I charged up the big switchback on the Roller Coaster trail. Not too much farther I was making the last corner and out of the trail on my way to the Hillside trail when I veered off the trail on the outside of a curve. To stop myself from heading over the burm and tumbeling into the woods I stiff armed a medium size tree. I was planning to just bounce off the tree and back on the the trail. Well, the tree was rotten. It snapped like a toothpick at the base of the tree. I went right into the wood on top of the tree and tumbled for a bit. As soon as I realized what happened two people passed me without a word. I jumped up and whirled around to try and make my way back onto the trail. Little did I know that I had a thorn bush between my legs. I climbed back onto the trail as the thorns ripped the flesh between my legs. Instant pain.

As I set back into my stride I looked down and my knee and inside thighs were bleeding. Both legs on the inside were also tore up from the thorn bush and my right knee cap had a nice big scrape. I am all for hugging trees but that was a little too intimate for my liking.

As I continued on I realized I couldn’t breath as my lungs were on fire. I have not felt like this in years. It was like my lungs were collapsed and I couldn’t take in enough air.  I saw Terra and the kids as I started to climb the Hillside trail. It is the longest climb of the route and I was hurting.

I finally reached the top of Hillside and set into cruise mode. I winded through the trails here which is a nice maze of turns and decending switchbacks. After Hillside we dropped out of the woods on to some pavement for the sprint to the starting line. I tagged Ryan and he was off for 3 laps of the mountain biking route.

After my daughter cleaned my wounds I took a quick photo.

Here is Ryan coming in on his first lap.

Slowly my lungs stopped burning as I waited for Ryan. The kids hugged me as I told Terra about the tree and thorn bush incident. My lungs still felt collapsed.

As I waited for Ryan to come around on his final lap I stretched a little. I was dreading the final 2 miles but I was happy everyone was spread out to allow for easier running. Ryan managed to come into sight and was running his bike. He flattened on the hills and had to run his bike with clippin biking shoes for the last quarter mile of so. Little did I know that when I took off he launched his bike, mad that he flatted, and it almost took me out. See the video!

I was more relaxed the final lap. Lungs still burned but I managed to not fall, trip, tackle any trees, tumble into the woods or rack any thorn bushes between my legs the final 2 mile lap. Eventually I strided into the finish, launched off one of the boulders and clicked my heels in the air. Unfortunately my wife missed the photo.

Despite the bad luck it was a great event. I really wish we had more trail races in Des Moines. We certainly have a great single track system.

We waited for the awards ceremony and swag giveaway. I managed to pick up a few things from a local brewing company.

Great time had by all and I can pretty much guarantee a better time next year. I don’t know final time yet but I’ll post it when it is on the CITA website.

Here is a post team photo Terra took.

I have big plans this summer to ride my bike from my house in Iowa to my home town in Wisconsin. It is about 450 miles and will take me 5 days minimum to complete. I have planned my own rout and have already posted the plan. It is going to be a pretty crazy adventure. So if you want to follow the folly then Pirate Velo will have all my biking updates there now.

Since I now have Pirate Velo and Husarography going I have added links in the sidebar for the RSS feeds. This will help you keep up to date and save you from trying to visit all three sites.

Here you can see Noah and I taking it for a spin. It fits Noah like a glove and he thinks it is “pimp”. I am guessing he will be the primary rider.

Now that the High Trestle Trail is complete I plan to make that part of the next century. Here is a photo of the 13 story trestle that is the flagship of the rout.

The HTT connects Ankeny, Sheldahl, Slater, Madrid, and Woodward. The trail is 25-miles long and cost $15-million. I took the time to map out a rout in Google maps, then convert to a GPX, then load to GPS Visualizer and finally import to EveryTrail.com. Form my house to the end of the High Trestle Trail is about 54 miles. The end of that will be my halfway then I will turn around and do it backwards. This should easily put me over 100 miles. Check out the map below for my proposed next fixed gear century.

Fixed Gear Century #2 at EveryTrail
EveryTrail – Find the best Hiking in Iowa

I am not sure when I will do this. We have company this weekend. It is Mother’s day the following. Then I have the Dam to Dam run on June 4th. If I do it in May I need to be sure it is not too close to that 20k run so I won’t have dead legs. My guess is I will take a day off work on a Monday or Friday to get it done in early May. I bought Terra new bike for Mother’s day so she doesn’t have to ride her mountain bike on the streets any longer. I hope to get her to do the HTT with me as part of the century. More to come.

EveryTrail – Find the best Hiking in Iowa

I started out with sunny blue skies. I thought to myself this is going to be a great ride. The sun lasted about 15 minutes and then I never saw it again. Complete overcast the rest of the trip.

I had no idea the wind was going to be as strong as it was. Looking back I would have never starting this adventure had I know it would be that bad. But hindsight is 20/20 and once I started I was not stopping. I have never rode into wind like that before. Starting out was about the hardest. It was blowing like crazy and at times I bet my 5k running pace was faster than it was riding my fixed gear into that headwind. All I could think about was getting close to Adel, IA because I knew the trail would have some tree cover and that meant less wind.

And so it went. My house to Adel, IA to Redfield, IA to Linden, IA to Panora, IA to Yale, IA and then my turning around point at the High Trestle Bridge which is 2.5 mile short of Jefferson, AI. By the time I reached the bridge I was well over 50 miles and my ass was hurting. My arms and shoulders were a little sore but not too bad. The wind really drained me on the parts that were open trail. This year I have done no fixie or road riding at all. My butt was in no shape for this adventure. That was a major oversight on my part. If not for how much my butt hurt I would have been smiling from ear to ear the entire way. Legs were tired but not dead. My mindset up to the half way point was just to get to that point. I was not thinking of the returnntrip at all. No matter how much I was hurting getting there meant one thing, I was half way and I would reach my goal off 100 no matter what. After all, I had to turn around and ride back. Calling my wife for a ride was considered utter defeat. Most importantly I would have a tail wind to push me the entire ride. It took me 6 hours to do about 57 miles on my fixie. No speed record were set this day. So I rested a bit and ate then jumped back on the bike and headed back the way I came.

Did I mention that by butt was hurting? I can’t say the last time I was in that much pain. At times it was excruciating. I found myself taking more breaks at in the towns and I stopped in Panora for a pizza and Mountain Dew. It tasted so good! Not counting the time it took to stop for pizza I made it back home in 5 hours and I stopped a lot to try and get some blood back into my butt.

In the end it was about 115 miles and took me 12 hours to do. 12 hours of nothing but me on my bike with a few people passing by. No real conversation except 5 minutes I stopped to talk to Elaine outside of Linden.

Here is the rout from Google Maps in a screen shot. Distance from my house to the bridge outside of Jefferson, IA is 56.2. Round trip I hit 115 miles which is the farthest I have ever rode any bike in a single day. Here is a link to the Google Map of the rout.

I am just happy it did not rain. I was ill prepared for the elements. Had I gotten wet I would have had to call for a ride and admitted defeat. When I did get home I was hurting bad, really bad. I could hardly get up off the floor once I crashed and that was 10 minutes after I walked in the door. Right before I showered I was starting to shake uncontrollably. I cranked up the shower as hot as I could take it and just sat there. After that I watched the new Doctor Who with Noah and drifted off to a dreamless night of slumber.

Today I don’t have any major pains. Just an overwhelming wore out feeling. I am thinking of taking Monday off. Who knows, maybe a good ride will help some of the stiffness. I do know I want to ride this rout again in the summer with little or no wind. If I can go 10 hours I’d be happy.

I’ll post photos soon. I’ll try to map them to a Google map to show location.

I am spreading everything out and this is the extent of my less than ultra light gear. I was hoping to avoid putting my CamelBak on for this one. I picked up a under saddle bag that is big enough for everything except the food and water that will go in my shirt and the the pump and tripod. Pump is necessary but not the tripod I guess. I think you can tell I am not out to blaze through the 100 miles but instead enjoy myself with videos and photos along the way. Here is a photo and the list below that.

What am I missing?

One Tube
Tire levers
Jethro Tule
Multi Tool
Patch Kit
2 CO2s
Pump
Leatherman tool

2 Energy Bars
2 Energy Shots
Water bottle

Long sleeve shirt
Helmet & Hat
Rain poncho
Cloves
Sun glasses

GPS logger w new AAA batteries
Flip with new AA batteries
iPhone & ear buds
iPhone backup batteries
Cash and ID

The rout I am doing for my fixed gear century is from Clive heading west then north to Jefferson. I just hope Mother Nature is cooperating.

I have to say it is pretty cool to see a big picture of the trails like this on Google Maps. In another year or two there is going to be some fantasic loops completed. I am really looking forward to being able to do the big loop going through Dallas Center to Perry to Jamaica.

Unfortunetly you can’t embed the map in another website for the bike map display. Here is a screen shot of the big picture below. If you click the map you will get the full size image. If you want to look at this on Google Maps here is the link to the interactive map.

For those of you that don’t know what fixed gear means it is pretty simple. There is not coasting at all. If the bike is moving then the pedals and your feet are turning. No coasting downhill, no coasting to catch your breath, no coasting at all. That is all you really need to remember. The chain is a direct drive to the rear wheel. If you pedaled backwards the bike would go backwards. There are also no gears to make pedaling easier when going up hill. I also don’t run any breaks on my Swobo Sanchez. The bike weight is 21 pounds I think. I plan to travel light with only my CamelBak on my back. Two tubes, multi-tool, 15mm wrench, and a few Power Bars and a bottle of water should about do it.

This will certainly be a challenge this early in the year for me. I am not expecting it to be anything like the gravel century I did for the first time last summer on my tank of a moutain bike. The hills on that rout killed me. The Racoon River trail is pretty tame since it is built on old rail road tracks. They have a minimum grade of something like only 4% for train tracks. The only thing that will be a killer is if it is windy. I am keeping my fingers crossed for little wind and some sun.

Any takers on predicting my total trip time door to door? Post a comment on how long you think it will take me. Winner get their name in lights on my blog.

I expect to be stopping for photos along the way and to eat at least once. Here is a flyer below of the entire rout if you are not familar with the trail. I am leaving from my house which is just off the map in West Des Moines. From my house it will easily put the entire trip over 100 miles. I am not racing it so I expect to have a good time, some fodd, a few beers and just enjoy the pain a little.

We hit hillside pretty hard and Noah did better than he ever has before. He still has not made it up the backside without stopping at least once. But that will change this year I think. With fresh legs he only had one stop and it was at the begining of the trail over the first rooted area.

Here is our GPS track of the ride. There is lots of overlap on hillside so you will have to zoom in to try and figure out the entire rout. We pretty much hit everything but Denmans.