2017 Dirty Kanza 200 - Part 1: Thursday/Friday

Race report time!
Or, well...  something kind of like a race report, but more like me rambling on and on about my amazing experience in Emporia, Kansas.

Thursday, June 1, 2017:
Beep...  Beep...  Beep...
My alarm clock blares at me after about an hour of actual sleep.  It is 3:00 and I am getting out of bed in order to make it to the airport in time for my 5:35 boarding.  This is it.  What I have been working towards for six months has finally arrived.  My very sleepy, but still quite wonderful SO drops me off at the airport at 4:30.  I drop my checked bag off and make my way through security quickly.  Then I sit and wait.  My teammate, Matt, is supposed to be joining me on this flight, so I keep an eye out for him.  Unfortunately, I get a message from him at 5:30 saying he overslept and is going to miss the flight.  Eek!  Luckily, he is able to get another flight, but Delta is unwilling to work with him, so he has to pay full (last minute) price.  Way to be an asshat company, Delta.

I get called for boarding (YAY priority boarding!), find my seat, and sit down.  Relax, just breathe.  The sun starts to rise and I snap a picture just before the plane departs.  There is absolutely no turning back now.  We are doing this!

On the plane...  No turning back now!

I have a quick layover in Detroit and arrive in Kansas City around 9:30.  Matt had messaged me letting me know he was in Atlanta and would arrive in KC around 1:15.  I had some time to kill, so I grabbed the rental car and went in search of food and maybe a beer.  By the time I had gathered my bags and fetched the car, it was 10:30, so I found an outdoor town center near the airport and read some emails and answered some Facebook posts until 11:00.  It turned out there was a brewery nearby, so I went there for lunch and a beer while waiting for Matt's flight to get in.  This was my first taste of mid-west hospitality.  EVERYONE was so freaking nice!

On the way back to the car, I happened to see a skeeball game in the back of a truck! That was amazing!

Arcade games!  Woohoo!

I made my way back to the airport and picked up Matt and then we headed southwest towards Emporia.  It was an easy drive and I dropped Matt off at his hotel around 3:30 or so. He was going to put his bike together then ride towards downtown and meet me at the university, which is where I was staying for the weekend (Emporia State University opens their dorms for racers for the weekend, it was super convenient and actually kind of cool!).

I checked in at the dorms (people were seriously SO nice!), grabbed my bike from the student union where it was shipped, and made my way to my room.  After hauling my bags and bike box up to the room, I figured I should go ahead and put my bike back together. Luckily, the good folks at Bikenetic had done an amazing job packing the bike up and made it super easy for me to turn it back into an actual bike!  (THANKS JAN & STEARMAN!)

The only issue I had was that the chain had dropped either during shipping or during me getting the bike out of the box and had gotten caught under the drop stopper.  I spent a few minutes trying to get the chain back on, but was getting ready to give up and break the chain when I noticed another really nice person hanging out in the common area.  He worked for Enve and offered to take a look at it.  He noticed that if I took my bottle cage off, I could remove the drop stopper, get the chain back on, then put it all back together.  Thanks random dude from Enve!

Matt had messaged me and let me know that his derailleur hanger had bent during shipping and he completely forgot the two extras that he was supposed to bring.  He needed to go to the bike shop in town (High Gear) and see if they could fix it.  Luckily, they were able to fix his bike and he finished up at the same time that I got my bike back together.  I changed clothes and met him down by the dorm and we headed out to check out the town and find some food and beer.

Emporia is straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.  I really wish I had gotten more pictures of the actual town.

Cute Church on Commercial Street

Part of the Granada Theater

We ended up going to Radius Brewing Company, which was the only brewery in Emporia. The place was filled with cyclists, good beer, and delicious food.  While we were there, the guys from Bike Doctor Frederick (Jason, Chris, and two other guys that I can not remember their names) showed up.  Eventually, Maureen showed up and we met two local gals, one of which was doing the race, the other had to bow out due to a broken collarbone.  As usual, they were super nice and told us where to get a 200 miles/200 women tank top!

Maureen and I enjoying a frosty beverage after a long day of traveling.

I learned an interesting fact about Jason on Thursday, apparently he is a magician.  He entertained us with a couple of cool card tricks. It may have been the good beer that was flowing, but he seems pretty talented!

We eventually all went our separate ways and headed to bed.

Friday, June 2, 2017:
We had tentatively made plans to have those of us staying in the dorms meet at the student union for breakfast and then everyone else meet up at the bike shop for the "coffee" ride that was supposed to start at 9:00.  Laura, Maureen, Nathaniel (Maureen's SO and support for the race), and I had a hearty breakfast.  Maureen and Nathaniel needed to run back to the dorm to grab their bikes, so we were going to meet them along with everyone else at the shop a couple of minutes before 9 for the ride.

The blueberry waffle was the shining star of my breakfast!

Well...  Turns out "coffee" ride and "9:00" mean something completely different in Kansas than they do in the DC area.  Laura and I arrived at the shop at 8:57 and the ride had already left!  We saw a group turn by the shop and figured we would just catch on with them and hopefully catch the ride since we assumed they would be riding at a coffee pace. Well... we did end up catching some of the stragglers, but apparently the main group went out at a blistering pace.

So much flat...

We averaged about 18 mph at the start and only saw them in the distance before they completely disappeared.  Oh well, we got our first taste of some Kansas wind and roads. We headed back towards Emporia after a few miles.  It was good to work the legs a bit, but Laura and I really did not want to burn any matches the day before a 200 mile race.

We made it!

The rest of the day was spent exploring the town, checking in, chatting with fellow racers, and just overall enjoying the amazing vibe the is Emporia during Dirty Kanza weekend!

Check out the detail on that sunflower!

The town residents all come out on Thursday and have a sidewalk chalk party.  Some of the art was amazingly beautiful!  I loved every square inch of it.

The broken chalk makes this even cooler.

We went to High Gear Cycles and grabbed some CO2 cartridges (since you can not take cartridges on the plane and I totally failed at shipping mine with my bike) and met the shop kitty!

Kitty was not happy about being disturbed for a sale.

I met one of the guys from Rodeo Labs.  His Trail Donkey 2.0 was seriously the coolest bike I think I have ever seen.  If I ever need a new gravel bike, I am pretty sure I am going to get one of those!

I mean...  Look at it!

He was telling me that he raced DK200 last year and had a blast, but this year, wanted to do something a little more...  casual.  So, he was bringing along his camera and making a video of the race and the racers.  I saw him on the course a couple of times and he looked like he was having a blast!

We checked in with registration, grabbed our numbers and ALL of our swag.  Why did I not take any photos of our swag?!  A couple of us went to Gravel City, which is a store for all things gravel riding/commuting to grab some DK200 stuff.  I bought one of the aforementioned 200 miles/200 women tanks and a really cool Dirty Kanza hat.  I headed back towards the dorms to drop off my bags of swag and met back up with the group to grab some lunch.

While we were deliberating about where to go for lunch, I spotted a familiar blue Pivot with a Lauf fork.  I am bummed that I did not get a chance to actually see Gordon during the weekend, but I did snap a photo with his bike!

Hi Gordon!!! (Psst...  My bar tape is better than yours!)

I know several DK200 racers that raced with Lauf forks and they all absolutely love them. So, if you are on the fence, from what I hear of everyone else's experiences, get one.

We ended up eating at Casa Ramos, which was a Mexican restaurant close to the Arts Center (packet pick up).  What they lacked in service, they made up for in portion size!

This burrito (under all the iceberg lettuce) was bigger than my forearm.

I did find a really cool fake parrot to pose with, too!

We are quite the colourful pair!

As we were leaving the restaurant, we noticed an amazing photo opp for our bikes.  Matt's brother decided it was the perfect opportunity!

Bikes from Left to Right:
Zach's, Nathaniel's, Maureen's, mine, Laura's, Matt's
Not pictured: Paula's - she drove downtown

We all decided to disperse to get any last minute things for the check points and meet up for a (yes, I said A) beer before the racer's meeting at 7:00.  Maureen, Nathaniel, Laura, and I made our way to CVS to pick up some last minute snacks.  I grabbed some salt and vinegar chips, cashews, and ginger ale.  Breakfast of champions, I tell you!  We headed back to the dorms to drop the stuff off with Nathaniel since he would be running support for Maureen and Laura (and sort of for Paula and I since we had paid for the support for hire, but he had a cooler).

Laura and I then made our way back to my dorm room to ready some of our bike bags for the race.  Around 6:00, we decided our nerves were too much and we went to meet Matt and Zach for our beer before the meeting.  That one beer was enough to quiet my nerves and relax.  And by one beer, I mean a HUGE 24 ounce mug of beer!

Larger than life beer...  Good thing it was a wheat beer!

While we were having our anti-anxiety beer, a food truck drove by with the best slogan ever!

"Eat here or we both starve"

It was finally time for the racer's brief, so we made our way to the Granada Theater.  I can not believe I only took one picture of the entire theater.  It was amazing.

The Historic Granada Theater

Meeting adjourned!  We all decided to grab some pizza for take out and picnic in the park outside the dorms.  It turned out to be a great idea to get out the last of our pre-race anxiety before heading to bed to finish readying our bikes and getting some sleep.

Amazingly enough, I was feeling okay when I got back to my dorm room.  My giant beer had done wonders to relax me.  I only needed to add my bags to the bike since I had pre-packed them earlier in the day.  I did the last minute prep stuff to my bike and headed down the hall to take a shower (I forgot about the fun that is dorm life!).  By this time it was about 9:30.  I set my alarm for 4:00, turned on an episode of the current sitcom I am watching on Netflix, and actually fell asleep.  Of course, that did not last long and I woke up around 1:30 because I had to pee.  YAY for super hydration!

I did end up getting back to sleep, but it was pretty off and on until my alarm went off.  But over all, I felt like I got as much sleep as I could have under the circumstances.

Some of my most favourite words!