The first annual TRANS WISCONSIN MOUNTAIN BIKE RACE
June 18 2010

Day 1 Friday

We started near the small town of Hazel Green WI. At the Illinois/ Wisconsin border at 9 AM. 13 riders.
The first day was full of ridges and hollows up and down all day, very scenic. Was riding alone all morning, hot and sunny than right after noon just after pausing for lunch in Cassville it started to pour rain. I waited out the worst of it at a small campground along the river. I saw a group of riders go by and decided it was time to leave even though it was still raining. I caught up with Steve & Dave (The Iowan's on single speeds) Andy (From Missouri and multiple Leadville 100 veteran) and Chris (from Duluth) about a mile down the road and stayed with them the rest of the day. Although Chris was taking it pretty slow and easy and dropped back the rest of us made it to Mt Sterling by about 8pm. Steve and BIG Mike (Joe's brother) pulled in about an hour and a half later. We camped in a city picnic shelter. Andy called a BP gas station 3 miles down the road and asked if they would deliver any food up to where we were and the woman there said she lived in town and her husband would come and pick us up and drive us down to the station so we could get something to eat. So Steve and I went down to Senaca and got pizza and brought it back. Thanks to small town hospitality.
11 hours of riding and 110 miles.

Day 2 Saturday
Left Mt Sterling at about 6am with Steve, Dave, Andy and Mike. Very hilly section into Viroqua WI. Got there about 11am. While waiting for our food at a restaurant I noticed my chain looked like h--- so I went to the bike shop and had them put a new chain on it and while there noticed I needed new rear brake pads also so they put them in but couldn't get them working right took them an hour, Then when I left the chain was really skipping so I went back to the bike shop and had a new cassette installed. Set me back an hour and a half. The rest of the group had gone on ahead. The next section was the Kickapoo Valley trails; they were ok but not very well marked. I caught up to the rest of the group at Rockton bar and we finished the trails together. We went all the way to Norwalk where we caught the Sparta-Elroy trail which was neat. A really long tunnel in the middle. Got to Sparta about 7pm. Left Sparta about 8 or 8:30 pm and rode onward into the night. The first part was fun, a group of 5 of us doing a night ride, until we hit the overgrown snowmobile trial. A little hard to navigate and deep sand. We got through that and were a few miles south of Black River Falls and decided to bivvy for the night on the side of the road at 12:30am.
18.5 hours and 140 miles.






Day 3 Sunday
Cold night in the tents. Got up and left by 6am. Myself, Steve and Dave. Hit the trails just north of Hwy 90 and got lost immediately. Again deep sand that you had to hike a bike through. Finally got to Hatfield about 11am and had breakfast at a supper club. While there Mike and Andy caught up to us. Andy kept going but Mike had breakfast. Steve wasn't feeling well so I went on ahead alone. I stopped and talked to a camper at the county park and he said the trails ahead were in good shape, hard ground and nothing like the trails to the south. Well he was wrong, although they were better there still was some hike a bike sections. Caught up to Andy here but couldn't stop and talk because the bugs were too bad so kept pushing on. Took a detour to Rock Dam Lake, nice city park there and shelter to get out of the sun for a little bit and drink a pop. Onward into farm country, soon got into Amish country and farm dog country, I think in some areas I was getting chased by farm dogs at every house I passed, and it was usually 2 or 3 dogs at a time. Pulled into Thorpe at 5pm. About a 2 mile detour, and went to McDonalds and who do I run into there but Steve, Dave and Andy. They were just finishing up their meal and were going to get a hotel room for the night. I had planned on keeping going so after eating I headed North up to Perkinstown. Neat Amish country buggys and bicycles, pulled into the Kathryn Lake Federal campground at 8pm.
14 hours and 113 miles



Day 4 Monday
I had seen a well pump at the campground so after sleeping in till 6am I got up and made some oatmeal for breakfast but than when I went to the pump to fill my water I see a sign saying the well is closed because of contamination. I was in trouble very little water left. I filled up my filter bottle from the lake and headed out by 7am. I only got about a mile and found a gas station and was able to buy some Gatorade. Onward onto the national forest roads some of my favorite. Started onto the Sheep ranch road and saw the dead end sign but thought it looked like to well of a used road to be a dead end, must just be a washed out culvert that I can jump across. Well 4 miles up the road the bridge is missing and I could see where someone had walked down through the grass to the river so I followed and the river was to wide, deep and fast flowing to cross and I could not see any trails coming out the other side of the river. So it was backtracking to county road M and find an alternate route. Made it up to Cty road D where I could again pick up the route and looked and looked for Forest Road1523 and couldn't find it. I think I finally did find it (it was mapped wrong and the sign was missing) but it was overgrown and impassable. So again it was find an alternate route. Made it through and the next sections were good dirt roads. Stopped for lunch at Kennah about 2 miles off the route. It was a 1 store town (sporting goods) and all they sold for food was pop and candy bars. So I had a pop and a power bar and headed back onto the route about 12:30. Soon after it started to rain and kept up for the rest of the day. It was cloud burst after cloud burst for the next 5 hours. After the Skinner Creek road you were supposed to cross Cty W and go north on the UP Creek Road. When I got there again there was a dead end sign and I wasn't going to fall for that again so I went further west and picked up the Price Lake road which put me back on route. It was on this road where I got another cloud burst and the road was so wet it was getting really soft almost like the soft sand on the ATV trails earlier. After I got out of there and up to Hwy 70 it was still raining and my thoughts were to get to Hayward as straight forward as possible, unfortunately I did not have maps except for the area just around the route so my thought was to head north to Hwy 77 and than head east to Hayward unfortunately it was a lot further than I realized. It was a long, long haul up a county road to Hwy 77 in the pouring rain. I was feeling ok and really moving along at a fast clip but was approaching 100 miles for the day and didn't know how much longer I wanted to keep this up in the rain. When I got to Hwy 77 I was in the town of Clam Lake and still 40 miles from Hayward. I found a convience store to get out of the rain and buy some food and again I run into Steve and Dave. They had pulled in just minutes ahead of me. There thoughts were to go north to Ashland so they could at least dip their tires in Lake Superior and say they had crossed the whole state, so we checked the weather and the rain was going to continue till night fall so we decided to get a meal at a restaurant and a hotel room for the night.
112 miles and 10 hours.

Day 5 Tuesday.
Got up and went to the convience store for some donuts and left town by 7am. A short 35 miles to Ashland and we were dipping our tires in Lake Superior at 11am. We found a café and ordered a meal while we waited for Steve and Dave's ride to pick us up. They were going to drop me in Duluth on their way back to Iowa.
Thanks for the ride guys it was much appreciated.
3 hours and 35 miles.

Overall the ride was a great learning experience. I had never bike camped before.
Saw lots of wildlife, Doe's and fawns, Turkeys, Sand Hill cranes, Trumpter swans, Cows, Horses, Pigs, Farm dogs etc. The hills and River valleys south of Viroqua were amazing! As were the forest roads further north.
4 Days 2 hours and 510 miles
Jim Reed
Duluth MN

This is me crossing Hwy 53 about 19 miles into the race. Looking closely you can see I am wearing running shoes. About 2 miles earlier I should have taken a 90 degree right turn but I went straight onto a snow covered road which was the course in previous years. A race official corrected me within 1/2 mile.The skiing was impossible on that ice covered road so I had taken off my ski boots and put on my running shoes. I put my ski's back on a couple of miles later. It was a nice break from skiing.

ARROWHEAD 135

ARROWHEAD 135
Feb 1st to the 3rd 2010

The 2010 Arrowhead 135 started in the Town of International falls this year, it was cool (-20 F) clear and calm. The skate skiing conditions were pretty good i.e. good glide. As usual at the last minute I had thrown on some extra layers of clothes and within the first hour when the sun started to come up I had to start taking off layers. Skiing was going really well and I was feeling good. At about mile 16 I took a wrong turn or more correctly I went straight when I should have gone right. This was a change in the route from last year, I was following the old trail. I only went about 1/2 a mile before a course official on snowmobile came up and corrected my mistake. Course conditions continued to be good, I occasionally took my skis off and walked for a little while to use some different muscles. At about 4:30 PM I reached the 1st check point Gateway store about 38 miles into the race. I stopped there for about an hour, Ate and drank as much as I could stomach and refilled my water bottles and back out onto the trail. Up until Gateway the trail is pretty flat after Gateway the trail starts to get pretty hilly so the pace slows considerably. I found it was worth while to conserve my energy and take my ski's off to walk the up hills and ski the flats and down hills. And in the middle of the course boy are there some hills, hills that are scary to ski down in the day, frightening to ski down in the dark and occasionally I would even WALK DOWN the hills. It was a clear night the stars were out and about 9 PM the nearly full moon rose in the east, it was a beautiful night. Finally at about 11:30 PM I reached a trail shelter (a 3 sided lean to) at 58 miles into the race and about 13 miles from the 2nd check point at Melgeorge's Resort I stopped and bivied for the night. Even though I was in the sleeping bag for about 4 hours I think I only slept for about 2 hours. My socks must have been a little damp and I couldn't get my feet warm and the ground was really rough.
I got up Tuesday morning at 4AM and was back out on the trail by 4:30 AM. The skiing was pretty poor in the mornings I think we were getting hoar frost overnight and it would ruin the glide till late morning. All my water had frozen by this point and I didn't want to stop to melt snow because I thought I would get to cold so I pushed on to Melgeorge's checkpoint #2. I got there at about 9AM and found 3 other skiers (Mike, Tim and Matt) there that had passed me during the night. I ate and drank all that I could force down again (My thanks to the volunteers there including Anne Flueckiger) and was back out onto the trail by 10:30AM. I skied and walked all day, the skiing was pretty good in the middle of the day but again the hills were really tough and I would walk up them. During the day I passed all the other skiers. About 7PM. I'd had enough skiing and put my running shoes on and went out at a whopping 3 miles per hour for the next 5 hours. Matt Maxwell (another skier) was with me most of the evening. Again the night was clear and the stars and moon were out, you could really feel the temp get colder especially when you were down in the spruce bogs. We arrived at the Tipi checkpoint at about midnight, got some hot soup at the Crescant restaurant and climbed into the sleeping bag at about 1AM.
I got up at 5AM on Wednesday and was on the trail by 5:30. The trail conditions had gotten really bad overnight (no glide at all) I would ski to get my body temp up and then would have to walk to rest because skiing was so hard. Again 2 other skiers had passed me during the night (Matt had bivied with me) and I again passed them during the day, I saw Mike S. (another skier) bivied on the side of the trail. This last 19 miles is flat the whole way twisting and turning through the biggest spruce bog I've ever seen. With about 2 miles to go you turn off the Arrowhead trail onto the hilly Fortune Bay resort spur trail and finish at the resort. I was totally exhausted since I wanted to finish while skiing and there was no glide. It felt great to finally sit in a chair in a warm environment. I only had a chance to rest for about 1/2 an hour before Anton came looking for people to fill the van for a return trip to I falls, so it was back to action loading up my gear into the van, than I found myself sitting on top a pile of gear with two bikers in the back of the van for a 2 hour trip back to I falls, the fun just never ended.
My thanks to all the volunteers and especially Pierre and Cheryl for putting on such a great event. I met a lot of other great and crazy people and had fantastic time.

Official finish time 52:47:00
Avg minutes per mile overall 23.5 = 2.5 MPH
Avg minutes per mile when you subtract time spent at checkpoints and bivy's 17.9 = 3.35 MPH


From www.arrowheadultra.com
The Arrowhead Winter Ultra is a non-profit human powered ultra marathon on bike, foot or skis, covering 135 miles across the Arrowhead Region of Northern Minnesota from International Falls near the Canadian border to Tower, MN. The course follows a scenic, hilly, State multi-purpose trail under extreme winter conditions the first Monday of February.
Completing the course is no small feat as winter temperatures in this area of Minnesota have been known to reach a record -60F degrees. No wonder the locals have dubbed their town the "Icebox of the Nation" and "Frostbite Falls".
There will be 3 checkpoints, the main one serving hot soup and water at a cabin about the midway point by Elephant Lake near the town of Orr. Otherwise, racers are fully self-supported with a cutoff time of 60 hours. Each racer is required to carry mandatory food, water and gear as outlined on the rules page to cover the 3 days and 2 nights outdoors.


Highlights-Temps at the start in 2010 were about -21F degrees, around -10F to +10F during the day and at night, dropped to -20F degrees on the trail. Of 102 starters, 60 finished the Arrowhead in less than 60 hours.
· 38 of 52 bikers finished
· 19 of 45 on foot finished
· 4 of 5 skiers finished.
· 2 of 5 women finished
Official Firsts/Lasts---
· First biker, first overall- Jeff Oatley of Alaska started 7:03 am Mon. and finished at 23:20 Mon. night for a total time of 16 hours 17 minutes.
· Bikers, Pete Basinger and David Pramann were within seconds of the first finisher for second and third place.
· First woman biker, Janice Tower of Alaska established a new course record of 26h 46 min.
· First foot, Zach Gingerich, finished at 21:02 Tuesday in 37h 59min for a new course record.
· First skier, Jim Reed arrived at 11:50am Wed. in 52h 47min.
· Youngest Finisher- Christian Arel age 17, finished on bike on Wed. on his first attempt.