David Singlespeed Unrau

I’m falling behind on my race reports - Crank the Shield, Iron Cross VI and a number of southern Ontario cross races have passed without any updates.

Crank the Shield

Crank the Shield was one of my big races for the year, and it is the one that went well.  The race, new this year, was a three day stage race from Buckwallow to Haliburton.  We stayed at the convenient Skyways Motel the night before the race and were up early on Friday morning for the first stage.  I was racing, Eva was volunteering as race support, as her health is still preventing her from racing the long races.  The weather was pretty much perfect for all three days of the race, sunny and cool.  The first stage started through Buckwallow mtb center, and I worked hard to get into the singletrack with faster riders, so that I would be with the faster riders when we came out of the trails and onto the road sections

I can out of the singletrack with a good group of riders, and we were soon moving along the the first road section at a good 40kph, which was hard to keep up on the singlespeed.  I was soon joined by Scott Bentley, who had picked a monstrous 44:18 gear for the first day just for the road sections.  I raced with a 34:17 for all the days.  I barely hung on with the road group, and Scott actually dropped the group on a climb and disappeared up the road.  Next was the first ATV section, which was bog after bog.  Not my idea of a fun race course.  Mark Summers caught me in this section, and soon moved ahead as well.  The rest of the day was more bogs and then gravel road to the finish.  Scott, Mark then me was the finishing order in singlespeed.  The first stage had few redeeming features.  Buckwallow is great, but not at the start of a race in a crowd.  Racing on the road is a pain on a singlepeed.  Bogs are just not my idea of a fun time.

After as much food and sleep as I could cram in, Day 2 kicked off with more good weather.  The second stage started off with a gravel section into ATV trail.  This ended up being exciting, as the lead riders were cat and mousing to get into the narrower trail first, so the pace on the gavel was actually low, and we hit the ATV trail in a tight bunch.  The trail settled into the form for most of the day - highly erroded ATV trail over Canadian shield with lots of mud in all the low spots.  For most of the day I paced with Scott and Joe Cruz, while Mark was already out of site up ahead.  Joe was riding everything beautifully, which had me worried until I realized he had a low gear on - the course finished with ~20km of flat rail trail.  Towards the end of the day, Scott and I had managed to loose Joe on some short road sections, and I put a bit of a gap on Scott at the second aid station.  I kept ahead until the final rail trail, and put my head down and tried not to look back.  The race ended Mark, then me, then Scott, but Scott had enought time from the first day to remain in second place overall, while I was third overall.

The last day was the only day with trail that I actually enjoyed riding - Haliburton forest.  After a neutral ride out to the start, the stage started with lots of gravel climbing along fire road before working into Haliburton forest with a good mix of gravel sections and singletrack, with lots of elevation change.  I stuck with the same gear for the whole race, which meant my gear was a bit hard for the day.  Joe, Mark and Mark where ahead of me from the start, while I traded places with Scott and Pter for most of the day.  As soon as it started to get more technical, I managed to start putting in some ground on Scott.  The trails were awesome, and I pulled in fourth, with enough time on Scott to take second overall behind Mark.  I’m very happy with how the race went, and with my result.  The competion was great, the race was well organized, the food was awesome.  The first two stages, I can do without.  Mud and ATV’s don’t make for good riding in my book.  The staged format was not as hard as I was expecting.  12 hours of riding spread over three days goes a lot easier than 24 in one day, but the pace is very high.

Iron Cross

Iron Cross was my other big race of the year, and it did not go so hot. After my stellar performance at Crank, I had high expectations for Iron Cross. I raced the first stage at Crank (comparable lenght) at a much higher level of intensity than my normal enduro pace with out fading. I was setting my sites at a 4:30 or better time for Iron Cross. I did 4:40 last year, and was feeling stronger than last year at Crank. Iron Cross is one of my all time favourite events. The course is amazing, the organizers are great, the prize money is good and the atmosphere and attitudes of the racers are awesome. I prepared well for the race, but off the start, my leg were heavy, and never warmed up. less than ten minutes into the race, I was waving Drew and Nick of to go ahead and drop me. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it up the first major climb - the KOM climb.

The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I had to make it up the climb to get back to the start, even if I was going to DNF. At the top of the climb I decided to ride it out and settled into a more relaxed pace. Even then, my legs hurt far more then they should. I don’t know if I’m burnt out from the Crank or just sick, but I certainly wasn’t going anywhere fast last Sunday. Since I wasn’t going to collecting any results, I made sure to collect good karma - I gave my inflator to one guy stuck with a flat and no air. Next I came across a guy you had managed to loose *ALL* of his chainring bolts, at about the furthest point from the start finish that you can get. I scavenged two bolts from my bike (leaving me with three) and supplemented his setup with a strategic twist tie. We both made it in without any chainring incidents -so the fix was sufficient.  I ended up finishing in around 5:10, well off the pace.  We managed to pull in second place in the team catagory, good for $100 cash to fund margerita’s for everyone that evening, but that is another story….

We rode a couple of loops of the Albion Summer Solstice 24hr race course on Saturday. The course is very similar to last year, with a couple of minor changes and some new links between sections that have been on before, but in different orders.  There are no big hills, and a number of flat open stretches - so slap a big gear on that singlespeed.  I was riding 34:18 and it was not too steep.

I’ve updated the race setups page with details of this season’s races so far.

In spite of the hot weather, I just got in a great weekend of riding. It’s been in the low 30’s and very humid over the last couple of days, but I’ve been staying well hydrated and popping lots of Hammer Endurolite electrolytes while riding. I think I’m finally over whatever was dragging me down throughout the spring, and my chronic sore throat has finally gone away. It’s good to be getting lots of riding in, and to start catching up on my preparations for Crank the Shield this fall.

On Saturday, I got in a great 5 hour ride on my cyclocross bike. Right now it’s set up fixed (42:16) with Panaracer Pasela 700×32C tires. I rode down to Cambridge, where I met up with Dave Beer, then we headed south on the rail trail past Paris before looping back up on a mix of gravel and minor paved roads. The rail trail was pleasantly shady and cooler. The gravel roads were hot. The pavement sections were unbearably hot.

Sunday was the O-Cup at Kelso. I was not sure how this was going to go, given ~120km of gravel riding the day before and my less than stellar performance at the O-Cups so far. Well, things were grooving. Sunday was hotter I think, but at 9:30am it didn’t feel anything like the afternoon heat the day before. I took it easy on the big exposed climb then focused on turning the pedals over through the flats and technical sections. I ended up 8th, and only ~7min down from the leaders - by far my best result of the season. Kudos to Nick who ended up 2nd, and Dave Beer, who had a strong performance as well after braving the heat on Saturday with me.

The quote of the day goes to Dave Dermont, who raced to victory in Expert 45-49 in the 1:30pm heat:

Going up the climb, it felt like my head was going to explode like a piece of popcorn!