shoota 

Anyone going to be there?

Marcus_Ti

One of mi amigos will be doing the DK100...Have to be at work probably all day or I might private SAG it for him.


We have a cold-front coming through the area...and it is looking like the wind will turn around just so that it'll be a cruel Great Plains headwind the whole day....even if the Emporia area dodges the 1+" rain forecast here to the north.

jayhawkpanic

Marcus_Ti

I heard today's festivities were delayed due to rain...

Up here to the north my rooftop got 1.5" of rain (per my PWS) between 1230-3AM. I guess Emporia and Flint Hills got winged by it.

wheelsmcgee

shoota 

ksryder

It was pretty rough. This was my fourth 200 finish and by the far the hardest one. The early storm meant it was sloppy at first, but nothing like the mud fest of 2015, and I was glad to see they re-routed around that section. (This is a bike ride, not a bike walk.) I was riding with my friend and teammate who was working on his fifth finish. We had to deal with a couple punctures that slowed us down, but we finished the first 100 in a respectable time, about 7 hours, which was slower than last year but still on track to beat the sun.

Coming out of the second checkpoint in Eureka we went east for about 20 miles before turning into the headwinds. By that time the cloud cover had blown away and we were in the hottest part of the day -- thankfully not the 100 degree temps that had been in some of the forecasts, but still toasty. My buddy started struggling more and more, but I figured he would just rally because everyone hits a wall in the third leg and eventually pushes through it. We had to stop at the top of a hill when my front shifter paddle broke, this was about mile 130. While I was looking at my shifter he sat down in the ditch and started looking worse and worse. Long story short, eventually he had to take an ambulance out of there for sever dehydration/borderline heat exhaustion. He's OK now and met me at the finish line, but it was pretty dark there for a while.

All told we were on the side of the road for about an hour. By that point any of the fast groups I was riding with were long gone, and everyone who had passed us while we were stopped were slower, so I just spent the last 75 miles alone, passing folks. Also, I was stuck in my 34-tooth chainring the rest of the ride. More significantly, my enthusiasm for riding my bike had pretty much evaporated about the time my friend got in the ambulance. I never thought I was going to quit, but I was just ready to be done by that point. I spent a lot of that section re-evaluating my life choices and wondering why I haven't taken up shuffleboard instead.

The last stretch was uneventful, and the wind died down and the temperatures dropped as the sun went down. I caught a wheel here and there and chatted with some folks for a bit before riding on, and since I was mostly alone I put in my earbuds and zoned out to music for much of the ride. Finished in 16:23, which I was fine with considering all the extra issues on this ride, plus I beat the sun last year so I'm over it.

Probably be back next year to get Number 5 but for now I'm going to enjoy relaxing for a bit and not training.

shoota 

What an adventure. if it makes you feel any better Jens Voigt was committing suicide with his banana as he rolled through checkpoint two.

"This is how I feel!" "I want to die!" Why do I do this?!?"

Koyote

I was there once. It was about 22 miles into the Mount Evans Hill Climb, at about 12,000 feet, and it was the first time I ever felt like just stopping and climbing off the bike in the middle of a race. Aside from riding one more race for which I had already registered, I gave it up that year -- and rediscovered my love of beer and desserts.

ksryder

Lol yeah, I mean I'll probably be back next year shooting for number 5, but for the next few weeks I'm going to relax a bit, catch up on some projects around the house, and then maybe start looking at some CX in the fall.

wheelsmcgee

ksryder

Thanks. Yeah hydration and nutrition are one of the challenges of this race, it's hard to test what works at mile 150 because we just don't get that many chances to ride that far. After 4 DKs I've dialed it in quite a bit but still refining. Plus everyone's different and what works for me might not work for the next person.

Basically i eat salted dates every hour and supplement that with a protein source every 3 hours. I don't drink plain water at all now because I found at a certain point it just starts flushing right through me without actually hydrating. So I drink highly diluted skratch.

So that works for me, but this year by the third checkpoint I was pretty sick of both dates and skratch. Guess I need to have a little more variety, so back to the drawing board to figure out what works.

But the other thing I do is heat training. About 6 weeks prior I'll spend an hour a couple times a week on the trainer, wearing as much cold weather gear as I can, with a space heater blowing on me. It sucks, but it pays off.

Garfield Cat

Ksryder,

On all 4 rides, did you use the same bike ? Any difference in set-up? If different bike, what was the decision?

ksryder

Well I'm not a good example because I'm embarrassingly cheap. First year was on a steel nashbar cross bike with a 105 10-speed group. I wouldn't recommend that. The frame was fine but I ended up replacing every single thing on the bike eventually, down to the seatpost collar. Would've been less expensive to spring for the better quality bike in the first place. I also had a hell of a time with the 105 5700 group, it never shifted right and I found out later that I'm not the only one who had that experience.

I broke that frame in the Land Run mud and it wasn't worth it to have it fixed, so I bought a 2008 Specialized Tricross Expert frame from my friend, because that's what was available at the time and I was in a bind because this was just weeks before DK. That's turned out to be a great frame, it was really ahead of its time. 3 bottle cage mounts and room for wide tires, it was really a gravel bike before that was a thing.

I've run trigger pro 38s, tubeless, every year with one flat. I've been running the Potenza 11-speed group for a couple years now and I really love the way it feels and shifts, BUT, I don't think it's really up to the rigors of gravel. I've busted a derailleur and a shifter -- on Saturday my front shifter paddle broke at mile 130 so I was stuck in the little ring for the rest of the ride. I'm talking to my LBS about SRAM 1x options right now.

If money wasn't an object I'd have a disc brake steel frame with a billion bottle cage mounts. The RodeoLabs Flaanimal really ticks all the boxes for me, hope I can get one some day.

Metieval

DK 2018 confirms my choices/opinions on gravel bikes.

I am already a Cannondale fan anyways. But a while back I voiced the Opinion If I wanted to go fast / race on gravel I'd choose the SuperX. For everything else gravel I'd choose differently.

zimdba

I saw a ****** quote the other day that was, effectively: at the end of the ride, I said I'm never doing this again. The next day, I said that wasn't half bad. On the drive home, I was making plans for the next year.

thehammerdog

when a Jens Voigt is only 95 th in a race you know it is not a joke

ksryder

He posted something on social media to the effect that he only has 3 trophies on display in his house. DK will be the 4th. That seems like a pretty powerful testament.

thehammerdog

The guy is a hero beast of a rider The race must be one tough event.

Metieval

did he have a flat tire?