Big Wheel Racing

Big Wheel Racing showed up in full force to represent at a new race in Gunnison, CO called the Gunnison Original Growler. The race was the brain child of mountain bike pro and hall of fame member Dave Wiens, the current 6 time champion of the Leadville 100.  Jeff, Jeni, and Matt all raced on the single speed bikes and Mike M showed up on his geared 29er.

The race proceeds will be used by Gunnison Trails to fund a new trail loop from Gunnison to Crested Butte that is expected to be a national trail destination. The race was very well organized and the route was nothing short of epic. Big Wheel Racing was proud to be in strong attendence at this innagural race event and we look forward to supporting trail organizations such as Gunnison Trails in future years. Way to go people!

In addition the BWR team recieved their new shipment of Ergon products the week prior and team members were eager to try out the new stuff. Ergon is the sponsoring team of Dave Wiens and also Iowa legend (and BWR friend) Jeff Kerkove, whom was also at the race.

Thanks for all of the support Jeff and we appreciate the relationship with Ergon and look forward to representing this company in future events.  We are very lucky to have such great sponsors!!

By Nate

Fool Hollow Lake in the town of Show Low Az hosted the Deuces Wild Triathlon Festival on May 31 / June 1. The even consists of a “long course” (aka half ironman distance) and an Olympic distance on Saturday, as well as an XTERRA off-road triathlon on Sunday. I elected to do the Long Course race on Saturday, and headed to the lake to bag a camping spot after work on Thursday.

The long course went off at 0630 Saturday morning in an extremely brisk lake (~61F?), and thanks to the combination of altitude and cold water I had a bit of a slow swim at 37:10 for the 1.2mi (2000m). After that long cold soak on the legs it took some time to get up to speed on the bike, but once finally loosened up the bike went smoothly, hammering out the 57.5mi in 2:42:04, which turned out to be 13th fastest bike split of the day. Heat and wind started to become a challenge on the in the last 14mi (which also contains the majority of the sustained climbing on the course). The combination of Perpetuem and nuun worked flawlessly on the bike as usual. An early mistake in T1 though I think set things in motion for a problem filled run, I took a couple ibuprofen after the swim to ward off the not uncommon post swim headache, having forgotten to bring tylenol. Unfortunately, what I failed to remember is ibuprofen will tear up my stomach in a hot run like we had. The result was an inability to absorb nutrition during the run, so after the initial 6 miles pace was decreasing continuously despite trying to keep up the fuel/hydration strategy that has worked well in the past. Consequently the run was a somewhat disappointing 2:04:12. A testament to the Hammer Nutrition and nuun combination on the bike that I had enough gas in the tank to complete the 13.1 mi run with effectively no nutrition and still salvage a 5:29:38 total time. Good enough for 30th overall and 4th in the 30-34 age group.

nuun is “gettin’ it done”