Death March 2019

I'm running a little late on this race report, but this was not a typical race for me. It took me a couple days to digest what all happened and then I was just busy and didn't get back to this. So, now it is even a little later than what is should have been, so I am sure I will miss some highlights. This year for the Death March I teamed up with the bearded wonder, Bushong. The plan was to get all the check points and see how we could finish. This remained our plan for the day even after Brian announced some changes to the race. He has upped the cemetery count to 18. There are still 5 mandatory check points, 3 known ahead of time and 2 pulled at the start. But, the big change this year was he also pulled out 2 dead cemeteries. This means they are not worth any time bonus and depending on what is drawn our route could change quite a lot. Let me start by saying that when I made my original route plan for all 18 check points, it was going to be about a 84 mile day. So, I was in for a pretty long ride. I was hoping that what dead cemeteries pulled would be ones that would help make the route a lot shorter.

Since I was the navigator and there were several new check points, I made a trip up to the area a little before the race. I rode out to a couple of the new check points and the one that I didn't really like at all was Cain. It was pretty far out there and just an out and back. It seemed like it took me forever to get there. I thought about this cemetery the whole week leading up to the race. I was really dreading the trip out there. Race morning I was really hoping that this cemetery would get drawn for a dead cemetery.

Dirty South Roubaix 2019

Friday afternoon we headed toward Alto Pass, IL for this years Dirty South Roubaix. There were a few people camping so we got a cabin at the same park. The weather was not going to be good enough that I really felt like camping and we were not like the rest of the group who are living the van life. We were able to check in early and then we headed out for a ride. It was great to stretch out the legs and take in some of the views.It is also good to see new areas.

The area was very nice to ride around. It was a little different area then I have ever rode, but it was still pretty nice. I had really slacked off the training the last month and a half after doing really good up to then. I didn't feel too bad for most of the ride, but the steeper sections hurt more than they should have. We then went in to get our registration packet and eat some dinner. St. Nicholas Brewery was a pretty nice place, but very busy. It took a little bit to get a table, but not too long.

After that, we took the longer than preferred drive back to the cabin. We had a cabin at Giant City state park. The cabin was really nice and I can definitely. see myself going back. It was a really nice area and had a lot of options for things to do. We finished getting our stuff ready for the next day before hitting the sack.