My rim tape got screwed from my morning rip
Back on course 5 hours behinder

You got this Rod

 and down he goes.

Looks like Jefe has a Andy shaped shadow that is gaining. Wondering if jefe will hike through the night to north rim

Has Rod pulled the pin? He seems to be heading back down Beeline to Phx. I hope not, kinda hoping his zero rejuvenated body and enthusiasm.

On another note, I just rode 89 to Schulz tank and down the Azt (Schulz creek), that trail is beautiful. It is kinda cold up here and some ground is already frozen in the shade.  Can imagine north rim to JL will be chilly overnight.

There is a video post on the FB page 'The Arizona Class of 2022' showing the Italian Trap Tank full of water as of 12 Sept 2022.

There are also some recent videos of hikers on youtube with some great information on the water sources in the last few months. Might be of interest to someone prepared to watch hiking videos.

The thread name change was the best laugh I have had for quite some time. Chapeau to that person.

Didn't you have tire troubles for your YoYo?

yep, I tore a side wall. My seamstress skills let me down. I've previously had 400 miles out a sewn side wall and then Ive also completely botched the repair to only get 10 or so miles. Wish I had the inserts back then.

If using tread thickness and puncture resistance to guess the potential durability/survivability of a tire, then this might be useful
https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/mtb-reviews?orderby=pr

this looks interesting, there goes Saturday night reading up on tyres.

[So what tires are recommended for the 800?]

So what tires are recommended for the 800?

I used 26x2.35 Schwalbe Nobby Nics last time for a 1 1/2 YoYo, with no flats at 15-20 psi, even though the inside looked like a porcupine at the end, also very little knob height left too.

I now need 29x2.25 and use liners/noodles at super low pressure (the vibration damping between 2.25 with liners compared to 2.35-2.5 without liners is very noticeable and very important to me and the nerves in my hands, also the proven run flat ability I have experienced over 15km on rocky and rooty trails with little loss of speed and no damage to the rim or liner)
Braking ability is not important to me (actually the only place brakes were important to me last time was short sections down Oracle Ridge, so I know low rolling resistance is more important to me)
When I have borrowed other riders bikes to test ride their tires on lower altitude singletrack near Tucson (not Mt. Lemmon) I liked tires with many little tiny knobs with many edges (but Vittoria Mezcals get a bad rating for sidewall strength [maybe they didn't use the TNT version] and for packing up in mud). I also like many tiny knobs with only small spaces between them as I believe that open-spaced knobs offer my opportunity for cactus and sharp rocks to penetrate the casing. 

Most important to me is low weight for the Grand Canyon portage, followed by durability (I will start with new tires, but don't want to wear the knobs down to the casing like some Ikons I saw worn to the green flat protection layer by Pine). Although, if I see any death mud HAH! I hope it is near the end when there won't be much in the way of knobbys left to collect mud.

so you are coming back for another run at it?.

Regarding tyres - I'm an ikons fan with inserts. Might try an ardent up front this year. I had a few washy moments last time and one particular hairy moment that put me into a bush over the bars, and we all know there are no soft and comfortable bushes out there.

So good to have the DW dot return, took a few years, not because of COVID or travel restrictions though....he was still scarred from that silly 750 yo-yo!!

That is closer to the truth than you may realise!! The yo yo destroyed me mentally and physically. From Picket post to the finish was a bit fuzzy.  I vaguely remember meeting another rider riding between PP and the Gila, I was definitely fatigued and not my chatty self. The trail was pretty much all mine after that. It has taken over two years to get back on the bike and even then it was only for the occasional fun ride at a local trail.

Of course the legacy route is longer, harder & slower, so there's that, but your ice cream would still be on route.

There is a little bit of me quitely pleased about missing those last few lumps to get to Harshaw road, if there was a least favourite part of the trail that was it. I always hit it around 3pm in the heat and no wind.

South of the Flume trail once the new reroute is done.

AH and Slowpoke rode it this spring, John had posted the track but then pulled it a couple of days later, you have to lift your bike over a locked gate at one point and upper Hog canyon road has sand deep enough to suck riding down. http://trackleaders.com/aztrspring22i.php?name=Olivia_Flaversham_Reload she goes off course after the flume El Pilar Tank shows up in the mytopo layer.

Eventually found El Plier. Between trackleaders mytopo, google terrain, and topofusion it finally has a coordinate. Thanks for that one.

Here is something intriguing, looking at Track Leaders AZTR ITTs 2022, the US Topo map contours are in feet but when you scroll in, really scroll right in, they are in metres. Fortuitous in that it saves multiplying everything by 0.3048 but also it is curious.

More northern riders have wanted a fall run, at the end of their summer training season, forever, once it came so did the monsoons to cause grasses to overrun the trail. It will be interesting to see how the summer plays out and what affect either way it will have on the fall run.

Lots of changes in the last two years lots of stuff that hasn't as well.

Looking forward to watching the DW blue dot.

Looking forward to being a blue dot again and possibly an attempt to seamlessly bounce that blue dot off the northern border. Some unfinished business there.

John's route changes have definitely added some complexity to the race logistically.

Splitting the difference between Patagonia and Sonita ruined a good ice cream stop. The wide berth around Flagstaff hurts a little too. It's the only chance I had to use my Frys card.

In 2019 heading south from Freeman Rd cache to Tiger Milne Rd trailhead I caught many cholla on my calves. A decent sized leatherman with pliers did the trick in removing them. Still hurt like a bastard. There is a lot to be said to ride with plenty of others clearing the track in front of you. I also found the wrapper from a packet of starbursts allows you to grab the cholla and pull it out. Starbursts weigh less than a leatherman after an hour or so, though not so good as toilet paper. Do the cholla have a season for littering themselves over the trail?

The garage floor is currently covered with bikepacking kit and I'm still chasing down the kit I've lent out, Nick if you are reading this can I have my saddle bag back if it's still usable.

Greetings and salutations,

Seems like a good time to get this thread up and going.

Having an October start changes training somewhat. Being an antipodean an April start would have me training in the heat of summer and quite possibly start training  too early only to turn up in Arizona with a false sense of ability, over trained, indelibly start too hard, get heat stroke, vomit everywhere, make poor decisions and end up at the back of the pack. Jet lag plays a huge part on how early I end up  going to sleep - far too early. The first year I rode until I almost fell asleep on the bike (9pm!!). The second year I arrived at that same place and decided to have a break and have something to eat. The temperature dropped and I was shivering with cold, I pulled out the sleeping bag to keep warm and woke up in the morning miles behind the anticipated rest spot.  Lets hope a winter training regime helps but I'm not holding my breath. Stupid is as stupid does.

Anyway, still loads of planning to do, parts to replace, and new route variations to investigate.

thanks

I had the same question

where's round prairie?

5km/3m north of Elkford, its the turn off to koko claims

[ideals]

Context is everything.

As a stand alone statement I wanted to comment on the irony of this comment being used but someone else did and it went unheralded and I cannot find it again to quote them and say touche/well done sir.

... they're just ideals to strive towards.

I think this comment brings us full circle (again). Again Im taking this comment out of context of the text it came from as I gave up reading these long novels 3 pages ago but it is synonymous of the rules as a whole and the race.

The ethos, spirit, ideals, and origins of the bike packing races in North America are unique to that area. While they are under the umbrella term bike packing and share many of the same rules they have a definite feel and uniqueness you don't get other places and the rules (in their limited form) are a big part of this. This hands off, honour system, doing something truely mentally and physically draining is the reason many of us travel there to race/suffer. It would be heartily disappointing if the AZTR turned into every other generic mountain bike race. Thankfully there is a wealth of people here with much more pull and acumen to keep the race from falling into a shit show.

While deep diving down into the minutiae of the rules has been interesting to a limited extent I feel it is akin to a meeting making amendments to a 30 page definition on what the missionary position is. 99.99% of us would understand a one sentence explanation and have adequate gumption to at least get the basics right to achieve the desired goal.

Maybe we could have a Rules Discussion sticky thread and start it with links to previous threads for a historical perspective.

Finally got time to watch the LW video.

Is it my imagination but around minute 10:00 it seems to jump from riding somewhere near oracle to an alpine area further north and then back to the ride into Freeman cache or am I mistaken?

I did not realise the post office box area was so small in SummerHaven.

[Social Facilitation:]

Quote (jsliacan)
People quote their experiences as reasons to limit/ban visitation. ... experience counts for nothing if there actually is an *objective* reason to believe riders get a boost. I'll vote for the restriction if that's the case. I don't see it though.


Full agreement that objective is a higher standard and would be nice to have.  When we better understand the brain we can probably prove objective advantage to emotional support from visitors or increased focus when being filmed/watched.  But we are far from that.

https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-social-facilitation-4800890

Social Facilitation:

"In terms of a basic definition of social facilitation, social facilitation refers to improvement in performance induced by the real, implied, or imagined presence of others.

Two types of social facilitation have also been defined: co-action effects and audience effects".

directly quoted from the site in the link

There are limitations with first study carried out in 1898 by Tripplet (with cycling coincidentally) and there have been 100's of research papers written since that go into a depth not warranted here except to say that this phenomenon exists. There are varied results in the studies but they do support of the idea that others being around helps 'performance'.

Might I also suggest this effect is amplified in bikepacking events such as the AZTR due to the brutality of the race, the remoteness, duration of the race, length of time away from others, and the amount of time you spend in your own head.

Great effort Dave!! There was never any doubt!

That was really tough, it hurt a lot, and had I not had encouragement from many different and surprising quarters I’m not sure I’d have finished.

I think the AZTR is out of my system now for the moment but AZ has so much more to look at and ride.

The heat is thrashing my backside so I’ve gone nocturnal until Friday when the temps look a little more comfortable. Will head back out this evening and attack oracle ridge with an assortment of stimulants to keep me going. I hope the French Onion Soup is still on the menu at the sawmill.

Fatigue has definitely set in and speed has suffered. There have also been some poor decisions made on a befuddled brain. I’ll get there but it won’t be pretty.

Had a rescue chopper circle yesterday. I had to make sure I’d not accidentally pressed the SOS button on the spot tracker. I can not afford that sort of bill. A thumbs up and a wave and it was off. I spent the next hour hoping I did not come across a hiker or cyclist who was waiting for it.

The 300 section is the bit I’m most concerned about with the heat. I’ve an extra bladder in my backpack that I lugged full over the big hill to Ripsey wash. A surprise water cache was the only thing stopping me having to ration until Freeman Rd.

This trail is stunningly beautiful and everything is alive, flowering, and growing like crazy. I’ve startled quite a few rattlers in thigh deep grass growing either side of the trail. Some sections have had so much of that jumping cactus covering the trail it’s been flicked up by my tires and jammed into my calves. Forget the Afro comb, a good sized gerber with pliers in a feed bag is doing the trick. It still hurts like a bastard

Thanks for the support here and FB. The whole ride has been incredible. Whether it be incredibly beautiful, painful, exciting, frustrating.... you get the idea. On the motivation side of things, one of the many motivators is making Elliot from Roadrunner Cycles live up to the promise of picking me up from the border IF I finish this thing. At least I know there will be beer.

No day pizza delivery yesterday. Thought I had enough to get me to oracle. My legs had different plans. Half way up the first climb I had nothing. I sat there for a while the rode to Kearny. Pizza. Shopped for food. Washed clothes and now I smell like cheap hotel soap. Got some new sunglasses since I broke my others on the nobo run. Now I’m sitting outside the PO waiting to send cold weather kit anywhere but on my bike. It’s a bit of a set back but hey, better safe than being carted out in a bag.