Thanksgiving Day Metric

Instead of lounging around and eating ALL day long on Thanksgiving, I decided to go for a metric. Matt Maxwell and I had been talking about a gravel road in Boone county that looked interesting, but that we'd never been down. L road/115th, if anyone's interested. It makes a nice curvy loop on the map, and it's just north of Fraser (where there are some other interesting, hilly roads that I took on the way back). I met a number of nice folks out on the road that stopped to say hello. The denizen of the house at the bottom of the hill on L road stopped in the middle of the gravel road, and when I pulled up next to him said, "I've seen a lot of things come down that hill, but never a biker. Well, at least not that type of biker." He must have been getting ready to head over to a family member's house for Thanksgiving, as he was putting a can of Busch Lite in his cup holder.

With the hills and the 25mph wind, it was a great day to be out on gravel. I remember thinking that I might expend more calories than I consumed this Thanksgiving, but after coming home and eating a few platefuls of delicious food that my girlfriend cooked for us, that's pretty doubtful.

There's only a few weeks left in 2011, so get out and ride!

~Nick

Courtney's Fat Bike Metric

Courtney Hilton is still going strong. This sounds like a fun ride, in that Type II fun sorta way:

November's metric was going to be a century but :

1 B Road
2 sandwiches from caseys
2 powerades
2 mikes lemonades
3.5 hours of tire changes
4 flat tires
6 thorns
=
only 85 miles of Pugsley fun

Three More from Drew Wilson

Drew Wilson had the following to report on his rides for the Cup. Sadly, I failed to get him his cups from past years at the Heck of the North, but word is that he'll be down in our fair state for some rides soon. Click on the links for a full write up on his blog.

Heck of the North: Not my best day - but beautiful riding up there.

Haymaker Write Up: I won "The Heroic" and then crawled 9 miles on my 29er to round out the full metric.

Dirt Bag 2011: 84.5 miles of Fall Classic and another win (this one quite lucky-  right place at the right time)

Craig Irving Catches Up

Here's what Craig Irving has been up to in the Cup O' Dirt department. This report officially gets him both the 1/2 Liter O' Dirt and the Cup O' Mississippi Mud! Keep on working towards the full cup, Craig, and props for riding with the injury instead of using the good hand to dial up the ol' lady on yer cell phone.

I've been slacking with the updates, but not with the rides.  This is me catching up.  I have another full century and three more metrics to report.  Here's the breakdown:

October 1st:  101 miles total, but my Garmin died at mile 97.  Had to map out the last few miles when I got home to make sure I had an honest hundy.  Spent the day getting lost and then finding my way back.

October 9th:  Pre-rode the Moonshine Metric course with a friend from work.  He later said it was the hardest ride he's done this year.  That was his first gravel metric...  Ever.  He's got the mind of the gravel racer though.  I offered him multiple bail out opportunities and even though he was really suffering, he refused each time.  Right on, brother!

October 15th:  Moonshine Metric!  Turned out to be a great night for a ride.  Eight of us took the start and five of us finished, including fellow Cup O' Dirt rider Courtney.  Just to shame us all, he rode here from Des Moines and then did the ride.  He ended up with ~240 miles in 40 hours.  Badass!

October 23rd:  Wanted to check out the course for a race I'm doing on the 30th so I rode to Marion, reset the Garmin and hit the course.  I had originally planned on riding a full, but crashed 35 miles into my ride and banged up my hand.  I rode another 10 miles before I decided to bail out, but I was still 35 miles or so from home.  I couldn't grip the handlebars properly so I was more or less one-handing the rough stuff and fast descents...  Seemed like a bad idea for a training ride.  I still managed to get enough gravel in for a metric before stopping for something to eat.  I polished off a meatloaf sandwich and some mozzi sticks and hit pavement for the bulk of the remaining miles.  Ended up with 85 on the day.

Courtney's 13th Metric and 8th Full

Courtney Hilton had this to say about his most recent rides:

Metric 13 was a good ride to Belle plain Iowa were I camped on the way to Mt Vernon.  It was 110 miles but only 60 was gravel so It's a metric.  This of course was on a loaded touring bike, too.  The next day I got in 2 metrics Belle plain to Mt Vernon and the moonshine metric, but since the total gravel mileage was over 80 for the day (well 30 minutes of it was after midnight) I'm calling it century 8.  Still on track for 1 a month but the hardest month is yet to come....December not for the cold but because of working retail and short days and it is cold usually.

Ride On!