Odin's Revenge 2016

Remember; Nebraska is pan flat. Photo credit: Ryan Trullinger

Every year that I do Odin's Revenge, I come away from it excited to go back and do it again the next year. This year was no exception. The people I see are fun to hang out with, the course is beautiful, and the weekend away from home is relaxing.

The previous years that I've done this event, I've done the short course that is around 60 miles and designed more as an intro to gravel riding in the area more than it is a race. That doesn't stop us from riding hard and making a race out of it. Two years ago, Tyler and I finished the short course first together and last year I finished it in third place after missing a turn and not catching the leaders in time (Tyler made an attempt at the long course). I was planning on going back and finishing in first again. The organizers are always pushing me to do the long course, however the "hang out and drink beer with friends" time after the ride always takes priority over doing the marquee event. Our friends Patrick and Sara Doty were going to be there again this year and it's been a while since we got to hang out with them so it was even more important to me that I wouldn't be riding for 12+ hours!

However, this year as I was inquiring as to whether the short course was the same as the prior years so I could get my Garmin ready, I found out that the long course would be crossing back through the start/finish area at about the 100 mile point. Also, there would be two checkpoints with water available within those 100 miles so the longest I would have to go between refilling my bottle would be a little more than 40 miles. I've always known that the long course hits more scenic roads than the short course and I've wanted to see and ride those roads, so after some deliberation with myself, I decided to just do the first half of the long course this year.

Just chilling and waiting to get moving! Photo credit: Chad Quigley

One thing I've always felt the short course was missing, besides the cool MMRs, was more competitive riding. The long course was certainly not lacking in that aspect. As soon as we hit the gravel, I felt like I was in a road race. A road race on, as Todd Tvrdik said, millions of ball bearings. We were jockeying for position, trying to simultaneously stay in the draft while avoiding the deep/loose gravel on the initial gravel roads. The pace felt kind of high and I had to make a couple hardish efforts to close a gap or two, but I had already decided to ride as hard as I needed in order to stay with the front group until I blew up so I just went with it.

The group whittled down slowly over the next 30 odd miles. I think most of the climbing was stacked into the first 40 miles and it felt like some of these guys were hitting these hills like we were in a 50 mile road group ride. It got hard, but I was determined to stay up front so I started using my momentum on the downhills to make it closer to the front of the group and then floating back down through the group up the next climb without losing contact. The rutted out and dusty MMR descents caused me to just about lose the group. At one point I hit a rut and just about bounced from one side of the road to the other and almost took out Andrew Casburn behind me. The group wasn't riding too hard though so we got back to them without much difficulty. By the time we made the first checkpoint, we were down to seven guys and I was feeling pretty good despite the hard riding we had up to that point.

I wasn't too surprised that I felt good at that point. I've done lots and lots of hard groups rides of about that length. I was more curious about how I would handle the next 60 miles, but I pushed on figuring I'd just go until I couldn't anymore. Up until this point, I hadn't taken a single turn on the front. I was just hanging on and letting things shake out. We were already going harder than I liked so there was no reason to stick my nose into the wind and make it harder on myself. However, now that there was just 5 or so of us (a couple guys stayed behind at the checkpoint) it was time to start contributing. The pace wasn't too hard so when it was my turn, I set a pace that seemed to match the speed we were already going. Looking at my power numbers it was a power that I knew I could ride at for quite a while so I was fine with that. Pretty soon I heard some commotion behind me and, turning around, I saw that I had opened up a gap with the guy behind me. I had no intentions of trying to ride off on my own, so I let up.

Dismounting at checkpoint 1. #crossiscoming Photo credit: Chad Quigley

Over the next several miles the group dropped down to four as Andrew's rear wheel, having quite the wobble to it and rubbing his chainstay, finally forced him to slow down too much. On a side note: Andrew is the same guy who dropped his chain at Pioneer's Park last year while leading the CX race there and still managed to put his chain back on and kick my ass. So, I wasn't without a bit of a smile when I saw that Andrew had dropped off the pace even though the tire rubbing the chainstay was probably a major contributor.

The three other guys I was riding with at this point were Todd Tvrdik, Mike Marchand, and Bill Clinesmith, the eventual winner. At one point Mike started cramping and Todd dropped back as well so it was just Bill and me at the front of this race. And I was feeling pretty alright. I was quite surprised! Pleasantly surprised, of course!

It wasn't too long at all before Todd and Mike caught back up with us. Mike seemed to have gotten past his cramps and it was nice to have two more guys to ride with. We spent several miles riding past pastures with less than effective fencing. There were more than a few cows loitering about on the roads. Thankfully there were no bulls that we could see. Though at one point we encountered a cow and her calf on the road with nowhere to go but at us or away from us down the road. They did choose to run away from us (I'm impressed at how fast a full grown cow can run, BTW), though Mike made the observation that the rest of the calves, who were looking on from the adjoining pasture, would now have a complex seeing as how they now knew who mom's favorite was. So if you have a burger in the next few years that seem inexplicably inferior...

Once we hit the second checkpoint at Potter's Pasture, I saw that we were on the back half of the short course again. I knew that the rest of the course would be mostly downhill so I knew I would have few problems making it back to the start/finish area even if I totally blew up. It was starting to get windy and knowing that I was going to be pulling out of the race at the next checkpoint so when we turned into the wind I immediately went to the front to take the wind for the the other guys who would be continuing on after the next checkpoint. I pulled for a few minutes and then kinda regretted it when Mike and Bill pulled through at a similar pace. But I was able to jump back on with little issue and we made our way through the rest of the first half of the course making pretty good time despite the wind.

Peter Sagan often finishes a race with a wheelie. I can't wheelie so... Photo credit: Rob Evans

We pulled in to checkpoint 3 with a total time of 5:46 and a moving average speed of 17.3 mph for 96 miles. I don't think I've done a road century that fast so to have done it on gravel was quite surprising to me! I was pretty stoked. I was honestly tempted to grab some food at the convenience store and make an attempt at finishing the full long course, but I stuck with the plan and called it quits. I was still feeling pretty good at the 96 mile mark, so I am curious how another 85 miles would have gone. If they do another long course where you circle back through the start/finish area at the 100ish mile mark, I will definitely consider attempting the full long course.

Odin's Revenge 2015

It's hard to capture the beauty of the scenery out there with an iPhone while rolling.

Odin's Revenge was a highlight of our summer last year. Racing bikes on gravel, hanging out at a campsite with good people, drinking beer, and getting two nights away from home with no kids in tow (thanks Grammies!) is a recipe for success in our books! So, when we started looking at our calendar for the season, going to Gothenburg again was a no-brainer.

I decided to do the short course again this year. One of my favorite parts of last year's event was hanging out after the race. I knew that doing the long course would mean not really getting a chance to do that again unless I had to drop out, which isn't something I would exactly plan for so short course it was.

We had a bit of a hectic week heading into Odin's weekend so my normal routine of getting the van packed up the night before didn't happen this time. Rachel dropped the kids off at my mom's house before their nap time and came home as soon as my mom got home from work. Side not: My mom really is super-Grandma. In addition to her normal awesomeness, watching our kids so often, she took a half day off of work so that we could leave early enough to make it to the rider's meeting in Gothenburg on time! I got home from work just as Rachel pulled into the garage and we got right to packing. We got everything packed up and ready to go from pretty much scratch in about an hour. Rushing around to get ready is not my favorite way to start a race weekend but the checklist I had made really helped things move smoothly.

We left Omaha around 2:15 or so and made it Gothenburg in time to attempt to check in to our hotel room and go to Walker's Steakhouse to get signed in to the race and get food before the rider's meeting started. The information at the rider's meeting is really more for the long course racers, but the organizers somehow manage to get a TON of swag from their sponsors so the little raffle they have after the meeting is totally worth sticking around for. I scored quite a few single servings of Skratch Labs hydration mix and one of those BackBottles from the maker of Fix-It-Sticks. I think that BackBottle will come in handy during 'cross season for sure!

We saw this rat rod in Gothenburg after the rider's meeting. I'm pretty sure I saw it on the interstate earlier that day too. Very cool!

After the meeting, we headed back to the hotel. We were getting tired and I wanted to get everything laid out for the race the next morning so I could quickly get ready and make it down to see the long course riders hit the road at 6 am. We were in bed by probably 9:30 but I laid there awake until closer to 11:30, I think. I'm not sure why I couldn't sleep. I wasn't exactly nervous about the racing and the bed was comfy enough. I think I was just jazzed about the weekend.

Despite my lack of sleep, I was able to wake up pretty easily at 4:30 the next morning. And, since I had everything ready to go, I was able to take my time eating breakfast and getting showered and kitting up. I rode over to the start/finish at the Blue Heron (formerly the KOA) and was able to see the long course guys/gals take off. I had about 45 minutes until my race started and I had to pee, so I meandered back to where the campsites are and saw just how bad the flooding was back there. Wow! There was a ton of standing water everywhere and water was rushing under this little bridge, where last year it seemed like a nice calm little stream! Luckily they hadn't really gotten much rain in the previous week or so so I was pretty confident that the gravel roads would be pretty dry.

These are all supposed to be campsites!

Our race (though to hear Chad "Odin" Quigley speak of it, it was more of a gravel primer than a race, but c'mon Chad, we're "pinning a number on" so it's a race!) started at 6:45 and we took off in a similar fashion to the previous year. I soft pedaled up to the front and rode a very moderate pace following our pace vehicle to the start of the gravel. By the time we hit the first turn, there was just three of us together with a big gap back to the rest of the group. Like I said, the same kind of thing happened last year (not everybody is there to go fast) so I wasn't too surprised, but I had seen Corey "Cornbread" Godfrey at the start and I know he is fast so I kind of expected to see him up with us too.

Tooling around the parking lot waiting for our race start.

After maybe two miles, the three of us were down to two. The guy that dropped off said he had recently injured a hamstring so he wouldn't be pacing with us too long. So, I rode with a guy named Ben, who was riding a fat bike (sorry Tyler, I don't remember the brand/model of the bike!) for a while. When we hit the start of the hills, Ben said he didn't think he would be holding my pace either and about 7 miles in, he started gapping off my wheel. I was trying to hold a very steady pace, not accelerating up the hills or anything, but those big old fat tires just don't go uphill as easily as skinnier tires. Of course, every time we hit softer gravel he would be right back on my wheel as my 35mm tires just dug in a bit.

I decided to up the pace a tiny bit to make the gap more permanent so we wouldn't be yo-yoing so much. After a few minutes of that my Garmin beeped at me to tell me I was off course. It does that sometimes even when you're not off course and I had convinced myself that there wasn't a turn or a ways yet so it took me an extra few seconds to realize that I had indeed missed a turn! I doubled back to see Ben and four others heading up the hill at the turn I missed. When I got to the turn one of the guys was dealing with a flat tire and Ben had just started up the hill so got past both of them pretty quickly. I was riding a little harder than I meant to so early in the race, but I didn't want the three others ahead to get too far away.

Not too much later, I caught the first of the three riders ahead of me who happened to be Craig Schmidt on a single speed. Because he was running his bike with one of those chain tensioners that look kind of like a derailleur cage, I assumed he was on a geared bike, which confused me cause he was riding it more like a single speed. Turns out he WAS riding it like a single speed, cause that's what it was!

Selfie time!

Anyways, I caught up to Craig and slowed for a bit. We made small talk for a bit but it was pretty clear that we were going to be riding different paces so I kept going. The two guys ahead of me had somewhere around a 30 to 60 second gap. One was in a Cycle Works kit and the other was in a Kaos kit. I still wasn't totally sure who it was in the Cycle Works kit, though I had a hunch it was Cornbread. I had no clue who it was in the Kaos kit, but from my limited experience, people in Kaos kits tend to be on faster side of the spectrum, with few exceptions.

It seemed as though I was reeling those two back, but it was odd. I'd seem to close in on them a bit when they were on flatter ground, but as soon as they'd hit hit a climb the gap would hold or get bigger. It turns out the guy in the Kaos kit (Adam Kornfeld) was on a single speed as well which would explain their pacing a bit. I didn't feel like the gap was insurmountable yet and we still had 40 some miles to go, so I decided to hold the pace I was doing and see how things developed for a bit. However, I really had to pee as well! So, I popped off the road, did my business, and got back on the bike. I could still see the two ahead of me (plus Craig since he passed me while I was in the bushes) as I started riding again, but they soon took the next turn and were out of sight pretty quickly. I kept expecting to crest a climb and see them not too far away, but each hilltop disappointed me.

I keenly remember Lydic Road from last year. It's a ~12 mile section of road that climbs pretty steadily all the way with several little kickers on the way. Last year, it was the softest part of the course, and made my chain make all sorts of bad noises. The roads this year were dry and FAST! I settled into a kind of TT mode, keeping my heart rate up between 160 and 165 bpm. A good solid effort, but not so high that I would be burning matches just yet. My threshold is somewhere around 167 bpm so I figured if I kept the effort just below that, it would be a good fast pace without killing me later. This road was the complete opposite of last year's slog. Last year, the road just stuck to your tires making you feel like you had a flat tire. This year I felt like I was barely touching the road.

Let's take a break and enjoy this sign I found in a gas station in Curtis, NE when I went to pick up Tyler off the long course.

Eventually, I crested one of the many smaller climbs to see a pair of riders standing on opposite side of the road, maybe a half mile ahead. The two guys I was chasing had stopped for a nature break. I thought I might still catch them before the checkpoint. Maybe then we could ride together for a while and then duke it out later. But then I had to stop for my own nature break yet again and those ideas evaporated. As I turned down the road towards the checkpoint at Potters Pasture, Cornbread (now I knew for sure it was him!) and Adam were already heading back out. I stopped as quickly as I possibly could at the checkpoint, just long enough to top off my bottles, before heading out again. After seeing how much of a lead they had, I knew it would be a big ask to pull them back in the remaining 30ish miles. I knew Cornbread could keep their pace no problem. I didn't know what Adam'c capabilities were, but every time I saw them, Adam was on Cornbread's wheel, so I knew he wasn't having to work as hard as I or Cornbread were. Since they were in different categories, I have to assume this was a deal they worked out. I kept on plugging away at the same pace though. I could only hope that they would take it easier thinking that there was no way I could catch them.

I'm smiling cause I managed to just barely miss a cute little three-legged dog that came running out on the road in front of me seconds before this picture was taken.

Most of the rest of the course was slightly downhill, so the speeds were pretty fast, somewhere around a 19-20mph average depending on where you look. Once I hit the Canal road, I knew there was only around 8 miles left or so and I gave it one last ditch effort. I went as hard as I could all the way back, hoping to at least bring Cornbread and/or Adam back in to sight. I averaged just about 21 mph and just felt my legs burn for a good 25 minutes. I never did see those two before finishing, but I felt really good about how I rode.

I'm pretty sure the race would have been different had I not missed that turn. I wonder how long it would have taken Cornbread and Adam to catch me if they did at all. If I could have worked with them, I wonder what would have went down. I've never actually ridden with either of them so I don't actually know how we compare head-to-head, but I would have liked to have been able to try! Oh well. A big part of gravel racing is the navigation and I made a critical error in that regard this year.

I think Greg Gleason and Guitar Ted were trading fishing tales after Greg won. "It was huge I tell you! Then it got away."

Next year, I'm strongly considering trying the long course. The challenge is calling me!

Rachel and I rode down Willow Island Road after my race for a little bit. Rachel got to experience gravel on her road bike. Not exactly the best tool for the job, but she did great!

An American Wheat in the Hand is Worth Two Berliners in the Bush

 A Berliner Weiss is a German wheat beer that is very low in alcohol and has a very refreshing, almost lemonade-like, sourness. It's a perfect warm weather beer that you can drink just about unlimited quantities of without getting hammered. In other words, it would be a great beer to make and bring to Odin's Revenge.

So, last Friday Tyler and I brewed... an American wheat beer.

The key to getting the right amount of sourness in a Berliner Weiss (at least the way that has worked for me in the past) is to pitch a large quantity of the bacteria Lactobacillus at a warm temperature before pitching any ale yeast to let the lacto do it's thing and bring the acid levels in the beer up to where you like it. Then you bring the temp down to an appropriate ale fermentation and pitch your ale yeast. To get enough lacto, I've made 1 liter starters for the lacto and let them sit warm for about a week without any oxygen addition or stirring. I did that this time but something went wrong. Either the vials of lacto, White Labs WLP677, I got from Northern Brewer (my favorite local shop, Patriot Homebrew Supplies, didn't happen to have any lacto on hand at the time) were no good or I screwed something up in my starter prep, because in a week, the pH never dropped much at all. It tasted slightly sour, but I was expecting a pretty good drop in pH and a very tart flavor.

So, plan B it was. I ran back to Patriot to grab a few more pound of malt and a couple more ounces of hops so we could make an American Wheat instead. I ended up using Nelson Sauvin hops for flavor and aroma as they're a hop and I haven't used yet and the descriptors of fruity and white wine flavors sounded like good warm weather flavors.

The drained mash looks kind of like a big round Clif Bar or something.

I've been playing with no sparge brewing in my last several batches. It saves a bunch of time and hassle since there's no sparge to deal with and doing a mash out step (if you are so inclined) is unnecessary if I put a flame on the wort as soon as I begin collecting it in the kettle. It uses way less propane as well. The downside is that my mash efficiency is significantly lower. When I fly sparge, I pretty consistently hit 80-85%. Back when I used to batch sparge, I got similar numbers to my fly sparging efficiencies. So far, my no sparge efficiencies have been under 65% and rather variable. This batch we hit a whopping 52%! So instead of hitting an O.G. of around 1.045, we got 1.037. That made me glad our mash temperature was a couple degrees higher than the 152° I intended. Hopefully, the higher temperature will give this smaller beer the body it needs. It will be more balanced to the hops than I originally intended, but I'm okay with that.

Automated temperature control. It's the bees knees.

I know what you more attentive and scrupulous homebrewers are thinking. I should have checked the pre-boil gravity and then corrected using malt extract. Normally I would agree with you, but I was more concentrated on this just being a fun brewday where Tyler and I could just shoot the shit and make some beer while we were at it. So, when the mash temp was a little high, I didn't bother adjusting it and I never worried about checking the gravity until the end. An American wheat beer is a pretty forgiving beer to brew, in my opinion.

So BACK OFF you tubby know-it-all! Just kidding. You know I'm a tubby know-it-all deep inside too.

Stick a mash paddle in it.

Flavor-wise, the low efficiency is nothing to worry about, but you need a lot more malt to hit your target gravity which adds cost and, more importantly, takes up more room in the mash tun. I think the next batch I do, I'll try batch sparging again. That will get more of those sugars out of the mash while still being a shorter brewday than fly sparging. I am quite over the novelty of 6-8 hour brewdays.

The brewday was perfect, regardless of the low gravity. We had no random problems and were able to sit back and let the brewstand do its thing while we drank beer and smoked cigars. Good life and bike talk happened which is just about more important than the beer brewing. You can always buy beer, you can't buy the other stuff.

Letting the boiled wort sit hot while the trub settles out in a nice whirlpooled cone.

Anyway, if you're interested in the recipe, here it is:

Minor Lite Wheat A ProMash Recipe Report BJCP Style and Style Guidelines 06-D Light Hybrid Beer, American Wheat or Rye Beer Min OG: 1.040 Max OG: 1.055    Min IBU: 15 Max IBU: 30    Min Clr: 3 Max Clr: 6  Color in SRM, Lovibond Recipe Specifics Batch Size (Gal): 13.00 Wort Size (Gal): 13.00 Total Grain (Lbs): 24.75       Anticipated OG: 1.046 Plato: 11.54 Anticipated SRM: 3.5         Anticipated IBU: 27.5       Brewhouse Efficiency: 65  %    Wort Boil Time: 90  Minutes    Pre-Boil Amounts Evaporation Rate: 1.50  Gallons Per Hour    Pre-Boil Wort Size: 15.25  Gal    Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.040  SG 9.90 Plato Formulas Used Brewhouse Efficiency and Predicted Gravity based on Method #1, Potential Used. Final Gravity Calculation Based on Points. Hard Value of Sucrose applied. Value for recipe: 46.2100 ppppg % Yield Type used in Gravity Prediction: Fine Grind Dry Basis. Color Formula Used: Morey Hop IBU Formula Used: Rager Additional Utilization Used For Plug Hops: 2 % Additional Utilization Used For Pellet Hops: 10 % Grain/Extract/Sugar % Amount Name Origin Potential SRM 18.2 4.50 lbs.  Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.036 2 3.0 0.75 lbs.  Sauer(acid) Malt    1.035 2 48.5 12.00 lbs.  Wheat Malt America 1.038 2 30.3 7.50 lbs.  Pilsener Germany 1.038 2 Potential represented as SG per pound per gallon. Hops Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time 1.00 oz.  Magnum Pellet 12.60 23.9 60 min 1.00 oz.  Nelson Sauvin Pellet 11.60 3.7 5 min 1.00 oz.  Nelson Sauvin Pellet 11.60 0.0 0 min Extras Amount Name Type Time 0.50 Tsp  Wyeast Nutrient Other 10 Min.(boil) 1.00 Unit(s)  Whirlfloc Fining 5 Min.(boil) Yeast Fermentis US-05 Safale American Ale Water Profile Profile: Distilled Water Profile known for:    Calcium(Ca): 0.0 ppm Magnesium(Mg): 0.0 ppm Sodium(Na): 0.0 ppm Sulfate(SO4): 0.0 ppm Chloride(Cl): 0.0 ppm biCarbonate(HCO3): 0.0 ppm pH: 8.32 Mash Schedule Mash Type: Single Step    Grain Lbs: 24.75    Water Qts: 40.00 Before Additional Infusions Water Gal: 10.00 Before Additional Infusions Qts Water Per Lbs Grain: 1.62 Before Additional Infusions Rest Temp Time Saccharification Rest: 152 60 Min Mash-out Rest: 0 0 Min Sparge: 0 0 Min Total Mash Volume Gal: 11.98 - Dough-In Infusion Only All temperature measurements are degrees Fahrenheit. Notes Add 3.4g CaCl2 to 10 total gallons RO water in mash tun and 3.1g CaCl2 to 9 gallons RO water in boil kettle. Generated with ProMash Brewing Software