Thoughts on dealing with the new two-pit stop, one "oasis" stop at DK200?

Zurichman wrote:I would be interested in reading some ride reports on the DK100 and the DK200 after everybody is rested up.

Thanks
Zman

I finished the 100.   Felt good most of the time, although it was hot!  I was told the high was going to be 85 but I bet it was closer to 95 in the afternoon.   Despite the heat I kept up on hydration and didn’t cramp up. 

I liked the route a lot, a nice change from previous years.  There were some stretches of rough gravel in the first half, but no mud and only one 6” deep water crossing.   Highlights include about a mile and a half of a shaded, flat cruise on the flint hills nature trail rolling into council grove, a pontoon boat of onlookers cheering us on at Kahola lake.  The expo was awesome too.

The last 20+ miles had a lot of tailwind and was more downhill than uphill.  A good race. 

The water worked out but if the EF water oasis at mile 100 wasn't there for the DK 200 man, that would have been ugly. I was not expecting it to be there and already in h20 conservation mode at that point..save me.
My DK200 went alright (my first)! I had a couple of flats and a bunch of dropped chains (poor drivetrain planning on my part and a pretty techy bumpy course. Beat the sun came in at 14h14m. two thrills were riding the last part in a 5-pack train with taylor phinney (crazy fast train and super fun...every time i looked up and saw the kit i felt like i was racing a world tour) and at the end the pack that i ended up in got real fast and we all positioned for a sprint finish. I got 2nd in the bunch (of course the kid that did'nt pull won the sprint)
overall great experience, volunteers and staff were rad..too soon to say if i'd do it again
BTW anybody know where to find more pics of the race? I saw a ton of shooters out there.  

Mackdhagen and others thanks for those ride reports. I did do a search and see last years pics were on Instagram. Curious as to who stayed in the dorms or what hotels people stayed in and what was a guess of costs involved on last weekend's ride race. 

Mackdhagen  you said you had poor drive train planning @your end. What happened that you dropped some chains?

Zman

Three flats. Really just one slash in one tire, but my plugging blew out after hanging in there more than a hundred miles. The replug wouldn't hold. then tube didn't like the plugs and flatted. yanked plugs out, put in second tube.
Then swapped out for spare wheel/tire at checkpoint 2.
for liquid...Rolled a 2-liter camelback and single magnum bottle to the first pit, then swapped in a fresh pack and went to two bottles. Stopped at the EF Education surprise oasis, and the official oasis (water there barely palatable, made some people prob already on edge of nausea kind of queasy.).
Heat was much greater than forecast, which caused issue for many, but I was mostly fine with it. 
Not a huge fan of the new course. The middle 100 miles or so is the real deal, but to my taste too many 12-degree ramps that really sap you.... then the first and last sections are essentially flat and featureless and to a degree tedious.
East Kaw Preserve Road is a tire destruction lab....and the only partly-told story this year is just HOW MANY flats people had. One story said one of the top women had eight. Phinney looked to have had at least four or five flats... I saw him down with two and it seems like everyone I know saw him beside the road with some guy riding with him fixing his tire.
The men's winner had two and should count himself lucky. Tetrick prob had a couple... Dunno about Ted King but he said he was going to run Compasses and if those things didn't flat at least once on this course I'll eat both.
You never really hear about this stuff because many of these folks have tire sponsors, but I'd love to know what flatted (eight times for one rider would be actual data) and what didn't.
I had one of the new Panaracer GK pluses in 43mm get a sidewall cut but frankly I think on a lesser tire it would have been worse... the  marks on either side of the cut led me to believe it could have been 18-20mm instead of just 8mm or so that opened up. And where it flatted, the road was an absolute crapshoot... organizers said they had shredded three truck tires there in one day. My rear was fine and standard GK 48mm spare finished out fine on front at 30 psi.

Will be a relief when they shift back to the south in a few years. It's not as intense as the middle of the new course, but the good stuff is spread more evenly.
As to two pit stops....it's unclear all the reasons they shrank to two. Probably includes reducing their manpower needs and reducing the impact on the communities along the course... and they say it lets them reach out and grab more interesting roads for course design... and they say it is likely to reduce the number of dropouts. One less place to bail (not that some didn't bail at the oasis)
I buy all that.
But....here's the thing. It is a MAJOR commitment from your friends or family to ask them to come out to Kansas and sit around in the heat  just to play a role for a couple of minutes per checkpoint.  If they only get to do that twice, it's just not much of a role. Yet you pretty much have to bring all that same stuff and they still have to come.
Also, for many it is a huge lift to see their family member(s)...
Anyway, that's what it is. Pretty sure they will stick to this course for a few years before rotating the crops to the south again.

Oh, and a couple minor points. On this course if the wind speed and direction were the same, I'd have left off the aerobats. They weren't any use with the pack on the flat stuff going out, and weren't useful with the tailwind coming in... only a few short stretched where I used them.
If the wind had been from the south, I guess they would have paid their freight in the last 45 or so and certainly in the last 12-14 miles.

And I did see several folks drop chains. I went 2x and removed the clutched XTR rear with the SS setup, and had no issues, but chain bounced on the chain stay quite a b it. good course for clutch rear setup. BIG gravel in the middle section.

Here is a short report....

I'm new to gravel racing and I was off the bike for 10 years due to work/life, but started training over the winter.

DK200 Finish time:  16 hours 15 min
Bike computer ride time:  14 hours 44 min

I rode flat free and mechanical free all day.  My bike is a Lynskey GR270 with Shimano Ultegra, 2x11.  I ran with Zipp 303 wheels and Teravail Cannonball 38mm tires with Stans sealant.  Leyzne Super GPS and a top tube food box.  Everything worked great and I was really happy with my tire/wheel setup.  My tire pressure was a bit high (45 lbs) but I weight 180lbs and with all of my water, food and repair gear, I'm over 210 lbs.  On the hard packed gravel my tires/wheels/pressure was perfect....on the loose scree gravel I had to be overly cautious because my tires were not very squishy, but I was able to stay upright and didn't slide much....and I had pretty good traction on the more technical sections.  In hindsight, I would have lowered my tire pressure for the 90 mile middle leg that was much more technical and then reinflated at CH3 for the last leg, but I had no idea what I was doing or what the course was like, so....there it is. 

I used a 2.5L Camelbak and two 1L water bottles on the frame and filled them every chance I got....I saw some horrific heat stroke and heat exhaustion out on the course and did everything I could to pump fluids.  In hindsight, I would have done the first leg with just the Camelbak, then loaded up with both the Camelbak and the frame bottles for the second leg and then just the Camelbak for the third.

The first 65 miles was great.  Temp was good, pace lines were good, rollers weren't bad and made good time.

The second leg, the 90 mile leg, was really tough for me.  The heat went up (my bike computer read 104F in the sun at one point...probably not completely accurate, but still, it was above 95F at some points) and the course became a lot more challenging and technical.  For the most part, almost all of this leg was either climbing or descending, not a lot of flat ground at all.  Some of the descents were also pretty rocky and needed caution, so in addition to going slow on a climb, you might also end up going slow on the descent instead of picking up time.  This leg took me 8 hours and knocked me out of finishing before the sunset.

The last leg was mostly flat with just a few notable climbs, but they seemed tame after getting a solid recharge at CH3.  Personally, I was spent on by the time I got to this leg and wasn't able to make up time, but if I had more energy in the tank, it would  have been possible to recover time lost on challenging second 90 mile leg.

Oh....and a small funny story....roughly 15 miles from the finish, I was in the dark and had to put on my bike light.  Light attracts bugs and as soon as I put it on I could see the cloud of bugs swarming around me and my bike. I rode on, but within a minute or two I was dodging bullfrogs!  And they were big - like bigger than a softball!  Over 2-3 miles I had to dodge 4-5 bullfrogs...and they'd scare the crap out of me when they would jump in front of me.  That didn't help my time.

Loved the event, the organizers, the people, the towns, the farms, the vistas, everything about it.  I'm addicted and will be back....to beat the sun.

Oh....and....I think the stats are something like 1200 riders started the DK200 and 800 finished.  I saw a lot of riders on the side of the road with their cell phone in hand during the 90 mile second leg.  The heat knocked a lot of people out...and a fair number of crashes.  I saw three crashes where the rider was definitely not going to continue due to injury or serious bike damage (taco'ed wheel).

Yeah, definitely the race organization was stellar, as always, and the townsfolk are just always warm and welcoming and plainly happy to have us... its like nowhere else in these regards. The Emporia experience is probably half or more of what keeps people coming back...

Thanks everybody for the ride reports. It gives to those of us who haven't ridden the ride a feel for it.

Thanks
Zman

This was my second DK200, first was last year.  I finished last year in just under 16 hours.  I bailed this year at the 122 mile water oasis after 9.5 hours ride time in a 12 hour day, I wasn't physically or mentally capable of hitting the checkpoint 2 cutoff time at that point.

I stayed in the dorms both times, last year solo and this year with a friend.  I think they're great for the convenience with included food and 1 mile ride to the start.  Last year the food seemed a bit nicer though, and our AC in the room went out this year Friday night.

I used the crew for hire both times, and probably would again.  The change to checkpoints threw me off for what I should have brought for food.  I was only carrying/packed gels, dates, and stroopwaffels, thinking I'd get something savory at the stops.  Last year they had real food (Subway sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, etc) at the 100 mile checkpoint and the 150 mile checkpoint.  This year, the 60 mile checkpoint just had junk food and the most basic PB&J you could imagine.  The constant sugar/dried fruit plus the heat wrecked my stomach by the time I got to the water oasis at 122.  

Last year I ran the Gravelking SK 38mm (measured 42mm on my wheels) and had one puncture to the rear tire that sealed itself.  This year I used the Gravelking SK+ 38mm (measured 38mm on my wheels) and had no issues.  I think a wider tire would have been nice this year.

Hydration wise I ran two 750ml bottles and 1.5L camelbak.  This was really pushing it with my fitness this year, and would have been a disaster without the house around mile 90 and EF water station.  

Overall I liked this course, was much more interesting than last years miles and miles of open prairie, but also hard to just hit your rhythm with the constant changing terrain.  My biggest issue was the change to the checkpoints.  This course with three, roughly every 50 miles, would have been a different story.