Kudos to Holly B, who seems to have finished the meat of the Canelos and should be cruising dirt roads to the finish of her southbound AZT at the border at Mexico this evening. I met Holly late last week as she was muscling her bike near the top of Ripsey. She had a massive gear setup and little (if any?) bikepacking experience, yet she said she was having a grand time and was determined to finish. Her attitude made my day and reminded me that it's just as hard, if not harder(!), to soldier through a ride at your own pace as it is to burn down a record. Holly, if you read this, I hope you had an amazing rest of the ride, and you impress the hell out of me.

JayP's BB isn't the only one to fail.  another cutthroat on their publicity run with the Radavist had the BB blow up as well.  I saw it on Instagram.

Personally I'd rather have a custom steel US made bike made over a Chinese made carbon frame anytime.

mike

The BB you're referring to was mine, Michael_S, and to be clear it did not fail. After 200ish miles, my Cutthroat developed a squeak while pedaling like none of the five of us had ever heard. Took the crank off to inspect, nothing was amok, and when we reinstalled, the squeak was gone. BB (PF41, not PF30 as some have said) was fine.

Having ridden the Cutthroat for three days, and with plenty of bikepacking and thru-racing experience to my name, I can say that Salsa has built an excellent bike. Perhaps not to everyone's liking, but no single bike will ever accomplish that. Rather than worrying about whether Salsa wants to co-opt the TD (they don't) or question their marketing intentions (these are good guys motivated by building good bikes that they want to ride), I think everyone should step back and recognize that it's super cool that a company of their size is working hard to serve what amounts to a very small niche in the cycling market.

i thought folks up here might appreciate this interview with Jefe Branham. some nice, honest reflection and pearls of wisdom (though of course his blogs are better). http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-shed/cycle-life/Winning-the-Worlds-Toughest-Bike-Race.html

Jen and I were bikepacking a CDT-GDMBR loop between El Rito and Chama this weekend, and this morning we caught up with Rob Davidson of New Zealand on the flanks of Burned Mountain. He was in good spirits, though he said he was hungry and tired. We rode a few miles with him, and he was moving along nicely, in spite of some issues with the cabling to his Rohloff hub. Every now and again, he'd have to stop, get off the bike, and manually shift it. He didn't seemed too fussed by it, "Better that than something on my body going wrong." Mostly he was just intent on getting to El Rito for some chow. Lucky for Rob, when we rolled into the tiny enclave of Plaza Blanco, the "Summer Store" was open (it was closed when Jen and I passed through on Saturday). We left him there, and he looked mighty happy to feed. He said his plan from here forward was "to go for a long bike ride each day, sleep a bit, then go for another long bike ride. Till I get to the border." Pushing hard, I think he meant. Lovely guy. Great spirit.

Yep, John, I was a bit muddled at nightfall on day 2 when I saw you. Scott has helped me track down the shooter, Dan Sharp. I saw him at the start, in the Canelos, atop Lemmon, and at the finish.

Does anyone have the contact for the photographer who was out on course during the AZT300 race this year?

just a quick note before i eat and pass out. i am so relieved and grateful to get through this course smoothly.

felt solid and easy to summerhaven, then a bit of a tougher descent down oracle ridge than i would have liked. almost came unglued in the heat and dehydration on saturday afternoon, with bad water causing some vomiting and slowing me down to molasses pace. fortunately some good water and rest at freeman brought it back around. felt strong from the time i got back on the bike last night at midnight all the way to the end. final time: 2 days, 3 hours, 59 mins.

bless my wife for leaving our car complete with icy beverages and day-old pizza for me at picket post. i'll recap when i'm better fed and more awake. in the mean time, good luck to everyone still out there.

the ridiculous thing, kurt, is you'd eat nothing but a whole box of donuts and still go fast all day. scott: SPOT sent me a replacement for my dead unit. i'll get you deets. couldn't believe how fast it came--took like two days.

definitely psyched to ride.

fortitude indeed, kurt. impressive ride my friend.

as scott said, the AZT300 beat me up. a bit more detail:

kurt and i rode steadily through the night together and were optimistic that the lack of clouds would mean no inclement weather. but on the sunrise hike up molino the rain and sleet broke.

at the molino outhouse, we both weighed options, though without mobile service we couldn't check weather. after ~hour, kurt decided to push on. i had no rain pants and took a nap to see how it developed. 2 hours later it was snowing and i decided to go for it anyway since snow=less wet than rain. after 1.3 hours of climbing, highway patrol turned me back at mile 14/windy point. road closed. it was 28, snowing, and the officer said there was 3-4 inches at summerhaven and they didn't expect snow to break till evening. i entertained the idea of the outhouse, but a dozen or more cold wet smelly hours...

kurt wisely got through before me. Last i checked he was making good progress. i am optimistic he'll soon be down to warm food, safety, and possibly a new course record.

everyone be safe out there. it has to be treacherous on oracle ridge, and ridge lines are a disaster with the high winds. pleasure as always, scott. this course is absolutely fantastic.

Hi everyone. Back home in Santa Fe after a tough and super enjoyable ride on the Coconino. I started at 6:40 on Saturday morning from the Starbucks in Sedona and, after a mostly straight-through ride, ended up finishing in 35:33:56. First off, kudos to Chad and Scott (and anyone else?) who concocted this loop. Mile for mile, there's as much enjoyable riding, compelling trail, and beautiful scenery as any ride I've ever done. While I personally really liked the tricky descent off of Mingus last year, I have to admit that Little Yaegar is a mighty fun piece of trail. And I'd say BIG thumbs up on the addition of the new AZT, especially when the race finishes in Flag as it's supposed to. That singletrack had me grinning even after a long, cold night of riding. I really hope you guys choose to keep it.

I've been thinking of doing this as a through ride for a while, mostly to rack up some experience for longer rides. In that sense it was a roaring success. I made just one stop, in Williams, which because of the cold turned out to be a bit longer than planned. Though I burned through several hours there, the long nap and hot food served me well later. I was initially disappointed to have to roll out of Sedona as I had a careful plan in my head based around the Flagstaff start, but given the mud I encountered Sunday morning on the 20 or so miles from Marshall Lake southward it was definitely the right call. I'm certain it would have been a slog any earlier. And yes, descending into Sedona in glorious sunset light felt like something scripted in a movie (although that Schnebly singletrack sure felt brutal after all those miles).

It was a really fun experience and I'd totally recommend this as a through ride. But I definitely missed the campsite hang and good company of last year's stage race format and I think when I line up in 2012 it will be with a sleeping bag and a flask to take the chill out of the night air around the campfire with everyone else. Congrats to everyone and hope you all had as meaningful and entertaining of an experience as I did.  

first, jen did indeed drop because of knee issues. her bike fit about a month ago hasn't gone well, and two hours in her knees were aching. felt fine otherwise, but she can't walk much tonight so it seems it was the right call. she's bummed.

mud report: i did a bit of scouting up by marshall lake today, and it was quite wet. lots of standing water on the dirt roads and the AZT was pretty slippery. according to a friend who works up there, it snowed and rained on and off all day in flag, and though nothing stuck, the area by marshall is quite wet. needs a day or two of sun to dry out.

i'm going to roll out of sedona in the morning early. i'd rather go from flag, but i'd also rather not slog through mud all morning. and this way, maybe i'll even see some of the others on the trail.

good luck to all. travel safely and have fun. -a

i was at the start at Starbucks this morning to see off the group. there were 9 riders there, and mike shultz, who chose to ride the trails down schnebly, was somewhere behind. attaching a photo of the group @ 7:30ish, just before they rolled.

i am hoping to ride the course ITT style from Flagstaff starting tomorrow morning, though I'm headed up to Marshall Lake this afternoon to check mud conditions.

good luck and have fun to all out there.

Sounds like we finally have a plan. Neat! Look forward to seeing you all at Starbucks at 7 tomorrow morning. --jen judge

i think either a schnebly hill overlook or starbucks start makes the most sense. either way, it would be nice to have a group start and the majority of people on the same page. it makes it difficult to track times if people are starting and stopping in different spots. either is fine for me, although my preference would be a sedona start, but i'll do either. just say the word.
-- jen judge

as of right now, i'm planning on starting in flag on friday (maybe around 10-11 -- but will be up at breakie at 7), but with that said, i'm totally open to changing it to a sedona start if people are interested. making the most out of the warmth is certainly appealing. -- jen

i think i got it to work, dave. from the earlier file. i'm on my way out of town for biz but i'll check later to be sure and let you know. thanks. -a

hi dave --

ditto on the track troubles. i've downloaded this multiple times and it will not install on my GPS. it continues to download as a .xml file. i have a past version of this track that came in as a .gpx file and it went onto my GPS fine. any suggestions or way to tweak the files so they download similarly.

thanks for any help.

-a

Lynda was kind enough to do a Q&A for Outside magazine. You can read it here:

http://outside-blog.away.com/blog/2011/04/the-cycle-life-300-miles-of-arizona-suffering.html#more

Awesome ride, Lynda! Way to hammer it out. As impressed as ever. You're definitely the most credible source I've ever cited.