Lunchbreak in NH

Less than five minutes out the door and I'm riding singletrack in this undisclosable location.

Been riding the Ridley 'cross bike the last few days making sure I weed out any infant mortality failures from slew of last minute changes I made. It actually rides mellow singletrack quite well.

There are over 100 pre-reg'd in the Masters 40+ field at Iron Cross. Per the email we received, the starting waves will be women, 6+ hours anticipated finishing time, 5-6hrs, and sub-5hrs. With Applegate there, I have no chance of winning the masters. There will be other strong riders there too, so a podium finish is a stretch goal. There were two finishers between me and Applegate in 2003 with a smaller field. Either way, I view this as a post season fun race. No point in stressing over it. If race goes well for me, I should finish around 4:10hrs.

Iron Cross VI: Definitely a Hill Junkie class ride.

The course should be the same as last year. Motion Based uploads show 61-64 miles and 7000-8000ft of climbing for the course. I downloaded a 61 mile GPX track into Topo 7.0. It gave about 7200ft of climbing. The upper half of the big climb in the middle is a run up, or more like a crawl up. The parts that worry me are the rocky bits. I could run 80psi and virtually eliminate pinch flat risk, but that doesn't do much for control or comfort. There are some very fast narrow gravel road descents.

I'll be on business travel most of next week. Not sure if the schedule will allow posting a report. If free time opens up, I'd rather do something active than be a monkey at the keyboard. There is a 12.5mi long paved rail trail less than a mile from the hotel in Rochester, MN. I may bring the rollerskis along with lights. I haven't done 40km in a while.