Saturday's Ride - Kewaunee Cluster Huck

Just catching up on posts - I rode a big 30+ person group ride in Kewaunee, WI to learn the trails over there.  They called it the Cluster Huck.  It was a great time.

We started off on the trails at Ryan Park, they were the ones I did the fatbike race on and were in great shape.  I like those trails more and more, and they are more challenging than what is around Green Bay.  Short loop though, only 3-4mi I think.

The second loop was maybe called riverview? park?  It was trails around some moto trails, they were good but very tight and did not flow well.  I'm told if I ride there more I'll like it more but I didn't leave feeling like I was excited to head back there again.

Third was the trails at the ski hill - these were real fun with lots of uphill and then also lots of fun downhill sections.  Flow was very good to me on these trails and lots of fun.  Not so much crazy tight stuff.

We rode from trail to trail for something around 16mi total.  I rode them all on the Yampa, it was great as usual.  I really like the bike a lot and it's nice and fast.  I however am NOT nice and fast, I was pretty slow and tired for a lot of the day compared to where I'd like to be.  Not so much on any technical skills this time but my gas tank is very small currently and my legs get tired fast.  I'm a long way off from the endurance I had back in June when I did the Lutsen 99er.

WEMS Race @ Kewaunee, Fatbike Duo 6hr

So, this weekend was a rain date for the Marquette trip, which again didn't pan out due to rain up there.  It reminds me of Duluth where if you head up expecting good weather you're going to have issues.  Anyway, the backup plan was to head to the southern kettles, I wanted to do it but with the timing of when we'd get there I was going to end up needing to be on a conference call for the first 1.5hrs of riding time.  That didn't work out and the day ended up being really busy Friday anyway so it's probably better I didn't slow the guys down.

In exchange/trade for the days riding, I decided to do the fatbike race at the WEMS Buckthorn Buster.  I've not been training much but figured heading out and riding the fatbike was a good way to use a day either way.  I planned on the 6hr but threw a post up on FB asking for a duo partner.  Cole ended up pairing up with me, that was great in two ways - one is I would've suffered really badly with a solo 6hr, and 2nd Cole is was fast so he carried me a lot.

The race was fun, the course was slippery from the rain we've had.  It didn't rain on the day of the race, at least during ours but the turnout was low so the course was sloppy.  I ran the first lap, I was able pretty quickly to see that I was not going to keep up with the fastest guys - a combination of overall fitness and then my handling skills and learning the fatbike were bit.  I did my first lap then passed off to Cole.  On the 2nd lap I pushed harder but came in after and felt pretty awful.  I got a chance to relax and catch my breath, then get ready to roll again.  The 3rd lap felt good, but I ended up flatting about 3/4 of the way through.  Flat enough I couldn't just run to the end, so I fixed it on course.  That took us out of any contention for 1st or 2nd, but 3rd was ours (there were only 3 teams).  The 4th lap I did better, put together what felt like a much better lap and turned out to be pretty solid.  I felt much better on the bike as the time went on, focusing more on carrying momentum through corners than braking in and hammering out of them.  I was disappointed to be so far off the pace but I know I'm not too fast yet and I know I haven't trained much lately.