UltraRob's Adventures

Photo from Iditarod Trail photo page
20 Iditarod Trail Invitational racers have made it to McGrath after 350 miles through the snow. For several this is their planned finish. Several others are heading on to Nome another 750 snowy miles away.

Jay Petervary won the leg to McGrath in 3 days, 14 hours and 20 minutes. He is now on his way to Nome. Most likely he'll be passed by the sled dog teams that started yesterday. This summer while we were in Alaska, I talked to a musher and asked him if he had seen the mountain bikers when he was racing the Iditarod. He had and said they were a pretty strange sight.

Jill, who has on a record pace early on, began having trouble staying awake. She spent 17 hours at the Rohn checkpoint. The long stay was partly to dry out a boot that got wet from a bad decision. Most likely that bad decision was from lack of sleep.

She wrote in an update from the Nikolai checkpoint

I bivied again last night at Sullivan Creek when I kept literally falling asleep and falling off my bike. I woke up after three hours and set out to pack up, but it was so, so cold. Everything was frozen solid. My chemical warmers had turned to ice bricks and I couldn't make them go. I crawled back into my bag and waited another couple hours before attempting again. Again, couldn't quite handle the cold. I finally just decided to wait until daylight and stayed in my bag until 10 a.m., but didn't sleep much.

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Labels: Iditarod, mountain biking, snow bike racing

Courtesy Chris Plesko

Reminder: Today and tomorrow (Feb. 11th & 12th) you can help Jill for the Iditarod Trail Invitational race by using the cycling and outdoor gear search to buy gear. Click here for more info.

Although the Alaskans and the Minnesotans may have the long snow bike races, we also have snow bike racing. Saturday night was the 2nd race in the Leadville Snow Bike Series.

Congratulations to Chris Plesko for winning! Dave Nice also had a good race. Chris has a good race report and so does Dave.

Last Friday our local paper, The Gazette, had a good write up of the first race. It mentions Chris, who got 2nd in that race. It also had a picture of Dave in the print version but it's missing from the online version.

I keep thinking a should give snow bike racing a try. I used to ride all the time in the snow down here. It's a lot different here than what they're racing on up in the mountains.

I haven't been fit enough the last 2 winters to not be worried about injury myself. The winter before that I was focused on training for the Race Across America and I didn't want to spend the time to figure a bike set up out. I should make it a goal to do do the series next year. I think it would be a lot of fun and give me motivation to train.

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Lake Cycling CX240C Winter Road Cycling Shoes Price: $279.99

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Labels: Leadville, mountain biking, snow bike racing