Iceman Race Report

Check out the offical report on Velo News.

Cole, me, Mitch "young gun" Gantz, and D-Fowler showed up to race a little end of the season mountain bike action at Michigan's Iceman this weekend. Despite numerous threats of snow and rain in the day before Saturday's race, the weather cooperated--distributing only a minor amount of snow, sleet, and rain from the sky on the race course.

So Cole and I got to line up at 2:30pm after all the other racers were clear of the course. This setup worked great, since the race was clear of all other racers, and there were plenty of spectators at Willimsburg Road and the finish venue.

At 2:30 we were off--and I was immediatly surprised to see Tristan, Matter, and Simonsen just ride at the front of the field, slowly but surely getting a gap. My goal for this race was to hang on to the leading group and see where I'm at, so as soon as we hit the doubletrack I got to the front and started going hard. Pretty soon I was off the front and latched onto Tristan's wheel. No one followed me, so it was just me, Matter, Tristan, and Simonsen.

Suddenly, Matter smacks his pedal on a stump in some fast singletrack....and throws a yard sale down in the middle of the trail. I dodged the remains and latched back onto Tristan's wheel. But it was too late, Simonsen already had a gap. Shortly afterward Matter got back up to us and I was hurting. Having no energy to pull through I just sat on for another few miles, before finally dropping back after a sandy uphill section.

I kind of laid all my cards on the table to be in the lead pack, so when I dropped back to the chase group I was pretty toast. I latched onto a group of 10-12 riders strung out single file and tried to recover. I was finally getting my legs back when the group hit a longish singletrack section and the lead guys pulled away, leaving me and 4 others to set the pace and chase.

We never did catch the next 6 riders up the road. Cole and Jesse made the split, great riding by those guys!

Eventually we reached Williamsburg Road, and I knew that the race only had about 10 miles left to go. But the hills were still to come. So I continued to sit on. With 4-ish miles to go I attacked up "woodchip hill" and dropped the rest of the guys in my group. Marko was drilling it about 15 sec in front of me the rest of the race....but I could never get close enough to close the gap. I rolled in at the finish for 13th place.

1 Mike Simonson Oxford MI 1:36:57
2 Tristan Schouten Sheboygan WI Trek / Vw 1:37:26
3 Brian Matter Sheboygan WI Pcw Hyundai 1:38:02
4 Randy Laprairie Warren MI Macomb Bike & Fitness 1:41:37
5 Jesse Lalonde Madison WI Gary Fisher 1:41:43
6 Robert Herriman Royal Oak MI American Cycle & 1:41:52
7 Dan Jansen Wyoming MI Founders Ale/alger 1:43:27
8 Jason Buccellato Lake Orion MI Klm 1:43:28
9 Jason Lummis Pinckney MI 1:44:19
10 Cole House Oneida WI 1:44:25
11 Russ Tiles Sprink Lake MI T & Z Blueberry Farm 1:44:41
12 Marko Lalonde Madison WI Gary Fisher 1:44:57
13 Ryan Baumann Madison WI Stadium Bike 1:45:16
14 Anthony Slowinski Louisville KY 1:45:24
15 Jimmy McMurray Grand Rapids MI Bicisport 1:45:40

I was really pleased with my race start, but dissapointed with my overall finish. If I wouldn't have made such a hard move to chase down Matter/Tristan/Simonsen at the start, I would have made the next selective chase group. But there are no regrets here.

Next year....the Iceman with Commeth again. I like this race. Congrats to Simonsen on the win, Tristan and Matter on the podium spots. Also, Jesse had an awesome top 5 result, with Cole also snagging a top 10. Nice riding by the Wiso boys.