2008 Fireweed 400 Results

According to a 2008 Fireweed 400 report in the Anchorage Daily News, Ben Popp of St. Paul, Minnesota won. His time was 22:28:42. My time in 2003 was 22:09:42 but weather and course conditions make it difficult to compare times.

Long time endurance althlete Rocky Reifenstuhl was 2nd with a time of 24:46:27. He was last year's winner. Reifenstuhl led for most this race before being passed by Popp after Glenallen.

The amazing thing is Reifenstuhl was hit by a lumber truck a week ago. He was struggling just to walk. He considered not doing the race but he said he doesn't like to pull out of races.

400 Mile Solo Results

1. Ben Popp 22:28:42
2. Rocky Reifenstuhl 24:46:27
3. Brandon McNerlin 24:56:22
4. Chet Fehrmann 26:01:24
5. Lew Meyer 29:12:28

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Technorati Tags: Alaska | Fireweed 400 | RAAM | ultra cycling

Fireweed 400

The Fireweed 400 started today at noon. The 50, 100, and 200 mile races are tomorrow. There are 733 on the start list between all the different distances. 15 are doing the solo 400 mile RAAM qualifier. The Anchorage Daily News had an article today.

I've qualified for RAAM at the Furnace Creek 508, Fireweed 400, Race Across Oregon and the Adironack 540. The Fireweed 400 is still my favorite RAAM qualifier. The scenery is so amazing and it's really only dark for a couple hours.

The ADN article mentions that the Fireweed 400 is tough because there's a lot more climbing in the 2nd half of the race. The race uses an out and back course. The race starts around 2800 feet and then drops to sea level at the turn around in Valdez. Racers then have to climb back up in the 2nd half. The course profile has never look right to me on the website. I have a big version from my computer download on my Fireweed 400 page that I've never finished up.

Having the 2nd half harder ended up working well for me since I didn't feel the best during the first half and felt good the 2nd half. I rode the 2nd half faster than the winner. I think I was in 5th at the turn around and finished 2nd.

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Technorati Tags: Alaska | Fireweed 400 | RAAM | ultra cycling

Iditarod Trail Invitational

The Iditarod Trail Invitational started on Sunday. It follows the Iditarod sled dog route. Racers choose whether to do it by bike, ski or foot. They also choose whether to go 350 miles to McGrath or 1,100 miles to Nome.

The weather has been good and the snow conditions have been good. Although the trail conditions have been good, there have been several reports of angry moose being on the course. It sounds as thought the leaders are now also running into softer snow.

The good trail conditions had people wondering if Pete Basinger could break his record from last year of 3 days 5 hours 40 minutes. Unfortunately, one of his pedals broke and he had to wait for a new one to be brought in by plane. Amazingly he caught back up to the leaders today. I raced with him at the 2004 Fireweed 400.

A couple weeks ago, I used my cycling and outdoor gear search to raise money for Jill Homer. She is having a great race and is on pace to break the women's record. Her boyfriend, Geoff Roes was leading the foot division but a bad ankle has forced him to turn back.

Currently the leaders are near Rohn 210 miles into the race. It's so remote that there aren't many updates available.

Here are several links to track the race
Iditarod Trail Leader Board
Iditarod Trail Blog
MTBCast Podcast including call-ins from people on the course
NPR's coverage of Jill and Geoff

Also Mike Curiak is again attempting to ride to Nome without using any of the checkpoints along the way. He won't accept any kind of outside help. He's carrying a transmitter that allows him to be tracked. Scott is posting regular updates on Mike's blog.

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Technorati Tags: Alaska | Iditarod | mountain biking

Helping Jill Do the Iditarod Trail Invitational Race

Courtesy of Jill
In a couple weeks, Jill from Juneau, Alaska will doing the Iditarod Trail Invitational Race. If you don't read her blog, you really should. She's an amazing writer and posts really great pictures.

The race starts Sunday, February 24th, 2008 and uses the course that the dog sled race uses a week later. Jill is doing the 350 mile division of the race that finishes at McGrath. There's also a 1,100 mile division that goes all the way to Nome. Jill is doing it by bike but some are running or skiing it.

I know first hand that doing a race like this isn't cheap. I wanted to do something to help Jill out. The traffic to my cycling and outdoor gear search has been steadily increasing. I started it to help me be able to afford to attempt the Race Across America again. I get paid a small commission when someone makes a purchase after clicking through from my site.

Monday and Tuesday of next week I'll be donating all commissions to Jill's race fund. If you've been considering buying some cycling or outdoor gear, now you can buy it and support an endurance athlete. You can also go to her blog and donate through PayPal.

If you have a blog or website, you can also help out by getting the word out about what I'm doing to help Jill.

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Technorati Tags: Alaska | Iditarod | mountain biking

Alaska Pictures Posted

I have uploaded pictures from my Alaska trip. There's no ultra cycling or backcountry adventures but a lot of cool outdoor pictures.

I went back to using a JavaScript slide show and a page with all of the pictures on it. I had asked a while back how do you like to look at pictures? I have pictures 3 different ways. Fonk had said he liked the slide show the best. That is also my favorite way but it was too time consuming to create so I tried some other options. I've only tried the page in Internet Explorer but I'll try at least FireFox.

I have since tried out Picasa and ended up creating a custom template for exporting to HTML. Creating the template took less time than it would have taken to create the slide show the way I had been. Now if I decide to add a picture or fix a caption, I can just run the export again. It will also make future pictures slide shows easier to create.

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Technorati Tags: Alaska | pictures

Alaska Pictures Recovered!

As I posted a couple days ago, there was an error when I tried using the card reader on my laptop to download some of our Alaska pictures. Once I put the xD card back in the camera, 3 days of pictures had disappeared. I figured there was a good chance they were still on the card since even when you delete files they are just removed from the list of files and the bits are still on the card. I had quit using the card so no memory would be overwritten.

I went looking on the web for programs to try to recover the files. I tried two and both of them allowed me to see image previews before buying the program. The first one I tried showed all the files but showed a movie as individual frames. The movie was just of some caribou and wasn't really important but I decided to see if I could find a program that could handle movies.

I found CardRecovery and it said it supported QuickTime .mov format that the Olympus Stylus 750 uses. In the preview it showed the movie and some more on the card that hadn't disappeared so I bought the software. It copied all of the pictures I remember taking to my hard drive. The movie of the caribou was also restored correctly. It was definitely worth the $40 that it costs. I'm keeping it installed but hopefully I don't ever need it again!

Cassidy blowing the whistle on the Talkeetna to Hurricane flag stop train

Wolf that walked right by the shuttle bus in Denali National Park. He was moving pretty fast and my timing wasn't quite right

A very pretty black wolf we saw up on the hill side in Denali National Park. We didn't get to enjoy him long since he was in a hurry to get somewhere.

Cassidy and Danielle standing at the top of Polychrome Pass in Denali National Park

Moose calf near my sister's house in Anchorage

Technorati Tags: Alaska | Denali National Park | pictures

Back to Real Life

I'm still alive and well but a zombie right now. I've been in Alaska for the last 9 days and got back this morning on an overnight flight. I had originally planned on trying to go when I could do a race. With my fitness being so off I decided it didn't matter and went when we could get the best airfare. It's a bummer since the Fireweed 400 is this weekend. I finished 2nd there in 2003.

We had unbelievable weather the first few days and then more normal Alaska weather for the last half of the trip. We saw some amazing sights and I have lots of pictures to get uploaded.

Unfortunately something went wrong when I used the card reader on the laptop. Always before I've just used the USB cable from the camera. When I tried copying files to the laptop, they all showed up as thumbnails but I kept getting an error trying to copy. I put the card back in the camera and tried copying them the way I normally do. My heart sank when I noticed that most of 3 days worth of pictures where no longer shown on the card. The ones that are left are listed twice. My guess is that most of the pictures are still there but are lost bits on the card. I know there's software that can sometimes recover lost files but I haven't used any since the days of MS DOS. Anybody have any suggestions?

There are lots of pictures I'd like to get back but the important ones are of the kids sitting in the train engineer's lap blowing the whistle on the Talkeetna to Hurricane flag stop train, a couple wolves in Denali National Park, some pictures of the kids at Denali National Park and some moose. Maybe there are some other ones I've forgotten too.

Technorati Tags: Alaska | Fireweed 400

Susitna 100 Results

The Susitna 100 standings were updated regularly during the race. Now they are ordered by finish with the winners of each division highlighted. Pete Basinger won the overall. I raced with him in the 2003 Fireweed 400. He was ahead of me for the first half but I caught him soon after the turn around in Valdez. We were back in forth in Keystone Canyon. I passed him one last time as we started up Thompson Pass. His crew of 2 young women kept leap frogging ahead and flirting with me. It kept me pushing hard because I figured Pete wasn't far behind. It took several hours before I didn't see them anymore. Pete finished 33 minutes behind me.

Jill finished in 20 hours and 50 minutes to be the 3rd woman finisher. She's already written 3 posts about the experience and plans to write more. First post, 2nd post and 3rd post.

Since John Stamstad was entered, I assumed he would be on a bike. Instead he was on foot. He finished 2nd in the foot division. Jill's boyfriend Geoff won and set a new course record. It's pretty amazing because 2 weeks before he was sure he had a stress fracture in his foot and didn't think he'd even be able to do the race. I guess it just forced him to be well rested for the race.

Technorati Tags: cycling | mountain biking | Susitna 100

Susitna 100 Starts Tomorrow

The Susitna 100 is starts tomorrow. It's a 100 mile race on the snow in Alaska. You can choose to mountain bike, ski, or travel by foot. You have until the morning check in to decide based on conditions which mode of travel you want to use.

Jill that lives in Juneau is doing it for the second time. She always has great posts about her rides along with pictures of the awesome scenery. John Stamstad is on the start list. I haven't seen anything about him racing in a long time. In ultra mountain biking, he's known for eating Spam and Twinkies during races. I remember one year at the 24 Hours of Moab, he lapped me during the night and I asked him how it was going. He said it would be better if he would quit throwing up. I didn't say much but I thought how much better of a racer he could be if he would use some good fuel. Even with what he ate he generally did really well. I think 24 Hours of Moab is one of the few races that I didn't win even though he did it at least a couple times.

The following weekend is the Iditarod Trail Invitational. It has pretty much the same rules but you have a choice between 350 or 1100 miles. My friend has done it and has tried talking me into it. Sometimes I really start thinking about doing it but then I come to my senses.

Technorati Tags: cycling | mountain biking | Susitna 100 | Iditarod Trail Invitational | Alaska