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2011 Leadville Snow Bike Series

January 17th, 2011

Snow racing will return to Leadville this winter with 3 races in the series. The first is this weekend. Like last year, 2 of them will be night races. The series is a great way to try out snow racing if you don’t live too far away to see if you want a bigger snow adventure like the Susitna 100, Arrowhead 135 or Iditarod Invitational.

Although snow racing is best on a bike like the Surly Pugsley that has clearance for giant tires, you can do it on a regular mountain bike. You just put as wide of tires as will fit on your frame and run low air pressure.

2011 Leadville Winter Mountain Bike Series Schedule

East Side Epic: Jan. 22, 10 am
Tennessee Pass Night Jam: Feb 19, 7pm
Mineral Belt Mayhem: March 5, 7pm

Chris had a good writeup of the East Side Epic last year.

Get the latest info on the Cloud City Wheelers Event Page or the Leadville Winter Mountain Bike Series Facebook page.

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Congratulation to the Iditarod Trail Finishers

March 2nd, 2008

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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Technorati Tags: Iditarod | mountain biking | snow bike racing

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Iditarod Trail Invitational

February 26th, 2008

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

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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Tags: Alaska, Iditarod, mountain biking, snow bike racing, snow biking
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Snow Biking

February 11th, 2008

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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