Specialized : Riders Club

Kit Cischke's Journal

2008 Ore to Shore Mountain Bike Epic

posted by KitC at 02:38 AM on August 11, 2008

Region:: Midwest
Location:: Marquette, MI
Country:: United States of America
Ride Type:: Mountain
Nearest Zipcode:: 49855

Ride Description

It is amazing for me to think that it has been almost exactly a year since I started writing in this journal. My first "real" entry here was a race report from the 2007 Ore to Shore. Crazy. At the same time, this is only entry number 42 or something. I'm writing less than once a week. That strikes me as being somewhat sad. Anyhow, on with the race report!

Picking up the packet was a mixed bag this year. The wait in line at Lakeview Arena wasn't very long, but somewhat longer than last year. The most disappointing thing was the swag. The t-shirt was much better this year than last, but I didn't opt for the shirt. I picked the socks, but they are this electric purple color that is almost offensive. Last year there were bottles of Amino Vital to drink, and there was nothing this year. There wasn't even a gel or package of drink mix in the swag bag. Oh well. My son rode in the "Little Rock", got the nice t-shirt, and it only cost $5 to do it. That, I think, is a pretty good deal.

We got to the race start in plenty of time, which was a nice change. After getting the bike dialed in, I headed to the start line without bothering to warm up. I took a spot just in front of the "Expected finish 2:00:00" sign, and just hung out there. I popped a Gu packet 15 minutes before the race while the announcer droned on about one thing or another. Part of his spiel was about the forecast, as each rider cast a wary eye at the dark and forboding western skies. He said that the only showers were supposed to be light, scattered, and early. We all had awoken to some puddles and other evidence of overnight rains, so we were all hoping the rain had passed. 'Twas not to be. About 3 minutes before the start, the skies opend up with a cold rain. Since it was already only 60 degrees out, we were all beginning to shiver and wish the race would just start already.

Here, I was grateful for my new Trek Sonic Elite helmet. The old Giro Animas never had a good place to stick sunglasses when they weren't on your face. The Sonic Elite has a great place to stick them, and I left them there as the race started. It was easier to squint and deal with the tire spray without the glasses than try to stare through splattered lenses. The roll-out was a little slower due to the wet roads, but it's not like we were all holding back. Especially after the shower ended a few minutes later, the pace picked up. Surprisingly, it still felt slow to me, and I just dropped the hammer. I started dropping most of my companions, and didn't let anybody who could have even potentially be an obstacle on the doubletrack stay in front of me.

Once we hit the dirt, the shock and fork were unlocked, and I got a few minutes to recover. I don't remember a lot from the next few miles, aside from some tires touching and somebody going down just behind and to my right. As things opened up, so did I, and started leaving more people behind. I'm wondering now if people look at those signs for the self-seeding at all. One thing that was immediately apparent was something I was hoping for since I saw the first puddle in the parking lot: the rain had firmed up the notorious Marquette sands a lot. We could really cruise through sandy spots, but it really got caught up in the drivetrain. Lots of grinding after each sand pit. We hit some pavement, I squirted a Gu Roctane and started grooving with the suspension locked out again. The next few miles of pavement were largely uneventful. I leapfrogged with a couple of people up and down the hills --- I would drop them up the hills and they would pass me going down. One of them, a Keweenaw local, was really aggressive on the downhills, and left me behind after a while. I did catch up to him several miles later and he looked spent.

The powerline descent through the sand pits was awful, as always. It was marginally less awful when I went through. This was for two reasons: 1.) There weren't as many people trying to squeeze through the area when I got there and 2.) not that many people had already gone through. Even here, I found myself catching people and wondering how I could pass them. I found myself just pedaling harder and leaving them behind.

Most of the rest of the race was uneventful too. As we came out of the woods and into Marquette proper, the shocks got locked out again, and that was a little premature. There was a little more trail through vacant lots that reminded me of snowmobile trail. It felt a lot like some of my time trial intervals in training, where I just put my head down and pedaled hard. Eventually I put the rear shock in Pro Pedal mode, even though I left the fork locked out, and that was much better. I was dropping people even here. I kept thinking that at some point, I was going to get tired, that I would run out of gas. It never happened. As we cruised around the Superior Dome, I saw a rider who was looking around like he was waiting for a week to latch on to, and as I blew past, he just watched. I sprinted across the line and was really surprised with my time: 1:49:58.6! Part of my surprise was that I had left my heart rate monitor off the bike, because it doesn't like rain. I took it off at the start and never put it back on. The rest of my surprise was the time itself. That's almost 17 minutes faster than last year's time, and only 20 minutes off the leaders! Given my life and body, I'm impressed. I think getting much faster would require a lot more training hours and really losing a lot of weight -- another 20 pounds or more. (It wouldn't exactly hurt to drop those pounds anyways, but the extra training hours will be hard to find.) I'm very happy with my performance. Now onto the Great Deer Chase!

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