Monday, January 12, 2009

Bad Water...

I'll be posting the complete and final results here in a day or so...

During the race I took on some "tainted" water, and I’m a "little" under the weather today, and maybe for a couple more...

Quick recap for all: Weather forecasters, should simply use the lotto system for selecting the weather forecast. This years racers SLOGGED the entire length of Heritage trail with nearly a foot of super soft powdered sugar snow over a super slick layer of glair ice, creating the most difficult trail conditions that even the most conditioned winter racers had seen. Run times were 3 hours slower than last, and NONE of the bikers made it passed the 2/3'rds mark. YUP, everyone abandoned the race. Our frozen saddle award (last racer on the course, 10 hours 40 min) went to seasoned Alaska winter racer Joel Austin who pushed his bike for 30 of the 37 miles to Dyersville and said the race conditions were about as bad as he'd ever seen.

The only bikers of the 40 who started even made it to the turnaround point at Dyersville were:
1. Dennis Grelk 6:21 (dropped at Farley on the way back)
2. Dave Pramann 6:29 (dropped)
3. Lance Andre 6:30 (dropped at Farley on the way back)
4. Tom Miller 6:55 (dropped)
5. Cory Knonser 7:00 (Cory would eventually travel 2 miles further than Dennis and Lance, to take the overall win (determined by greatest distance traveled on the designated route))
6. Brad Dumville 7:10 (dropped)
7. Nicholos Wethington 7:10 (dropped)
8. Justin Meyer 7:10 (dropped)
9. Joel Austin 10:40 (dropped)

We had a lot of racers this year who were making this their first “Alaska style” race, and well, other than the warm weather (9dF towards the end) they got the worst of the worst.
Kudos to all who helped and all who raced.
Again, when I get some sleep and fluids to stay down I’ll write up the full race report.
Sorry, Lance
Only one skier finished: Matt Maxwell, who also skied the extra loop for a 50k.

We had 7 runners finish the entire 23+ mile route, and one slogged the extra loop for the 50k (Mike Hodge). The winning runners (Joey Richey & Lisa Paluos) posted respectable times of 5:08 and 5:18 given the foot of fresh powder they had to slog through.

2 comments:

Neve_r_est said...

Well played, Cory.

Lance, you're nuts. Thanks for putting this together. Next time: http://aquamira.com/consumer

DG

Paul said...

While I really wanted to be there maybe it was wise I stayed home! %^)

I am sure there was tons of fun to be had!