Iceman

I've been thinking of posting a blog entry on our experience at the Iceman Cometh Challenge, a race that we did last fall, but I just haven't found time. It was a really fun experience. The Iceman is a huge big mountain bike race that takes place up north in Michigan's lower peninsula. We rode it on our two mountain tandems. This race is really the reason we ended up setting up the two mountain tandems. Little did we know this would be our last big bicycling event in Michigan. More on that another time.

There were 3757 finishers, so it was a crowded course. We were started in waves over a 2 1/2 hour time interval.  The Garmin indicates we ascended 1450 ft and descended 1540 ft, so it's not a huge amount of climbing, but just a constant up and down, with some climbs that were very steep -- as in tire-spinning steep. 

Quinn and I did pretty well, I think, finishing the 29 miles in about 2:43 (that's hours:minutes, of course). I had optimistically predicted we could finish in 2:30, but that was really more of a guess than anything. Quinn was a little racing machine; there were only two hills we were unable to climb, but we spent a lot more time than I'd expected in our lowest gear! Quinn didn't want to stop to rest or eat or drink, he just wanted to win. He rode really hard and I often had to ask him to take it easy so he didn't burn out. He was ready to do it again and do it even faster, and was wondering if he could do it on his own bike. We had so much positive feedback from other riders while we were riding, I think it really made Quinn feel proud. We passed a lot of other riders, often while climbing hills, and I'm sure 3/4 of them had some sort of encouraging comment. Many expressed some friendly disgust or resignation at being passed by tandem with a kid on the back. Those that passed us also found positive words for us. Once we stopped because Quinn really had to pee, but he was very concerned about losing ground at seeing all the riders flying past. He did his business quickly and then it was, "Come on, Dad, let's go, we're getting behind!" Soon, however, we caught up with the pack we'd been with before we stopped.  We passed a number of riders for the second time. Poor guys!  

The fastest times, by the pro riders, were around 1:33. The fastest tandem team was 1:56. There were 24 tandem teams and we came in 17th of 24. Cindy and Abbey came in 23rd. Because I rode with Quinn, it's difficult to find any benchmark against which to assess my performance. I did not see all the tandem teams, but all that I did see were paired adults. One guy that I know from the mid-state MMBA, and have ridden with somewhat competitively, with rode in about 2:20. Based on that, I think 2:40 with Quinn is good enough.  

Cindy and Abbey finished in 3:55. Cindy's goal was to beat 4 hours; also just a guess, but she did it. Cindy did not enjoy significant portions of the ride, particularly the narrow single track, which has over the years become a larger portion of the course (the rest being wider two-track logging roads and old gravel roads). All tandems with captains that had not ridden Iceman before started relatively close to the start (wave 27), so there were lots of faster riders that needed to pass Cindy and Abbey, which was problematic on the narrow tight single track where the girls needed to go slowly to squeeze through the trees. They felt like they were a bottleneck at times. If Cindy and Abbey had started in the wave with the 40-year-old women (as was originally planned), she would have been in a wave that started an hour and 15 minutes later. That would have been better, because all those fast old men would have started ahead of them instead of behind. Some portions of the ride were enjoyable for them, but by the end they were also extremely tired. The course was hilly and very challenging. I'm glad they did it, and I think eventually they will look back and also be glad they did it, but Cindy and Abbey said they would most likely not do it again next year. They have instead considered doing the Slush Cup on their singles, which is the shorter race course (8-miles) at the Iceman. The Slush Cup has no singletrack.

Overall, the weekend was fun.  We stayed at the host hotel, which is a really nice resort and spa.  Despite Cindy and Abby feeling a little overwhelmed during the race, I think that overall the weekend was a success.  

Click here to see my Garmin log.  Note that I started the log 10 minutes before we started riding just so I wouldn't forget to turn it on.

Click here to see a video of Quinn and me.

I've got a couple of pictures of the girls that we purchased from Action Sports Images LLC. On some other storage device, in some other state, I've got a couple of pictures of Quinn and me. I'll see if I can add them sometime.