I always thought this race could be done on a CX bike. This report confirms that.

I have had this one on my radar since it was announced, but convincing my wife to let me go race in North Dakota is stretch....

I had never heard of this race...and now it's on my short list. Thanks for featuring it on the front page. Hope they are ready for some growth.

There may not be many attractions in the area, but the landscape is beautifull. The gorge comes out of nowhere as well, it really is a mini grand canyon set on a flat prairie.

I was pretty much done with tris by 2008. I did wilderman in 2014 for shits and giggles with a couple of buddies and haven't done a tri since. Because I still smile about the memories of this race. It was just so different, and definitly crazy. It ticked every box for me : off the pavement, off the wall, night time racing, remote location, difficult, and also the race entry and travel/lodging costs were cheap. It just had all the odd ball stuff that you cant help but think later, WTF? An easy top 5 day ( I did manage to break 24 hours) of my life.

I really had a good time setting up my bike for this (like so many here on ST, I'm into bikes). Here's what I did....

I took my cross bike and put on a Red Shift seat post and mounted a Cobb V-flow saddle on top. The post allowed me to ride at 74 degree seat angle for the technical bits when I was on the hoods and drops and then you can shift it (on the fly) to be 78 degree. You can jump back and forth from steep to shallow while you ride. When it was steep I could settled into a super comfy aero position on my undermount aerobars - Profile pads and Zipp super curvy extensions (they've very similar to Mat Steinmetz' 51 Speedshop bars). it's funny because the shallow position was DEAD ON my cross coordinates and the TT position was almost identical to my tri bike save that my pads on my tri race bike are ~12cm in drop and my Wilderman bike as more like ~9cm in drop.

I ride a noseless Cobb 55 on my TT bike but wanted more cush and more nose as you have to be all over the machine through some of the tricky bits of the course.

I also ran a 1x11 set up and tried to get down to a 36tooth front but couldn't secure that ring before the race so I ran a 40 tooth front with an 11x32 cassette and it was just barely enough - many would I have loved a 36x30 for some of the steep pitches and long climbs.

I also used the new Enve 4.5 disc brake wheels with a tubless 36mm wide tire. Spot on! Could not have chosen a better set up. 112+ miles of wild and nary a flat.

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

I assume you meant 36T front.
I never would have thought about a red shift seat post... that's a great setup with two distinct positions.

My roots are in Saskatchewan, so the terrain is very familiar to me.
Congrats.

Wow. So impressive.

What all did you eat out there to keep yourself going and your tummy happy (except for the bonk part)?

Congratulations on both an outstanding race AND for having a great adventure!

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Hillary Trout
San Luis Obispo, CA

Your trip is short. Make the most of it.
https://www.slogoing.net/

"What all did you eat out there to keep yourself going"
I really operate well on fat so I ate several (many? less than a hundred) Justin's nut butter packets - mainly the maple and honey versions. I also did some good 'ol PBJs and have a few Clif Blocks when I felt like I needed to get out of a hole. The technical section was 2 hours and it's all coming so fast and furious that there's not a lot of time to take your hands off the bars and eat so that's when I'd hit the super high glycemic processed fuel.


The sweet stuff all too common in these races so I had some savory set in my "special needs bag" - turkey sandwich on Dave's seed bread with dijon mustard, lettuce, tomato - and I washed it down with a Mtn Dew. Damn that's good livin'!


The bonk in the woods was more due to circumstance. I saw 10miles from T2 to the aid station and figured I could get that done in 2 hours (12min pace) so I carried only 44oz of water. Well, the creekbed and hilly, overgrown trail was so gnarly that it took me 3 hours. I knew after 90min that I was gonna run out of water so that started to ration it and that created a spiral that caused the bonk. That was a bad time.


Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

It's interesting that you say that. I gave that some thought. There's a tipping point where they'd have to time and track athletes and where the access to private land might change. I image the RD Joel going to some of these super remote farms and saying "hey, I'm doing this little race would it be okay if 20 people rode/ran through your property on Saturday". That's so different from "hey can 250 people pass through your farm land next weekend". On the hand...this race (as it is) is so f*cking hard that just getting over 45 would be a feat!

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

Finally, a true use for Redshift, biomechanically, but curious to know how much time you spent at 74deg and at 78deg?
How much time did get to spend in steep and did it help the run at all?
My opinion would be that 74 is too steep for road/cross (esp climbing).

Lastly...with all those water crossings, I would imagine that all chamois creme or anti-chafe applications would be long gone. Add dirt and sweat. How itchy was the run?

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Anne Barnes
ABBikefit, Ltd
FIST/SICI/FIST DOWN DEEP
X/Y Coordinator
abbikefit@gmail.com

Anne,

Almost the entire trail section was technical enough that I set it back to 74deg and left it. I was on the drops for most of that and the hoods for some and in and out of the saddle. I spent a ton of time shifted forward in the steep position on the flatter gravel roads and that made my aero position so comfy. But even in the gravel bits, when a longer hill or descent was ahead I would just reach down, shfit it back and ride that segment on the hoods/drops.

I had 9+ hour bike split and to some extent - you just want another hand position but to have a whole other way to comport myself on the bike was a gift. I'm a Tri guy first and foremost and by that I mean I've ridden more hours steep over the past 18 years than I have shallow. I feel more powerful there, it's my jam. To that end even my road bike is set steepish (for road) 73.5 just because it speaks to where I feel better.

As to the chamois cream - I like regular old A & D Ointment from the diaper aisle at my local drug store. I slathered that on before the swim and its so damn viscous that it held up on the entire bike and felt good even with a tri pad after the river crossings. I did, however, take a long moment in T2 with a damp cloth and gave myself a pretty good cleaning: face, legs, crotch, all of it and in a very particular order :) - before I put on my run stuff. I just wanted some feeling of freshness.

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

i want to know, do you think you could've ridden 49km in an hour? and do you think kevin metcalfe could've finished wilderman?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Here's my favorite Kevin Metcalfe quote. I whip this out often when leading coaching education. It's from a June 2013 interview with Herbert right here on ST. "I just think that a lot of people never learn to pedal properly. I’m not saying that somebody should do a time trial or triathlon at 100+ rpm, but if a rider can’t pedal for relatively short (1 minute or so) durations at 100 or 110, they need to work on their pedaling".

I've near met him but he looks pretty tough, yeah, I think he'd finish it and have a damn fine bike split too!

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

wonderful detail, thanks!

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Anne Barnes
ABBikefit, Ltd
FIST/SICI/FIST DOWN DEEP
X/Y Coordinator
abbikefit@gmail.com

By the way Dano.....you know those DeSoto tri bib shorts that you rave about, well I bought a pair on your recommendation about a year ago and they became my favorite shorts for bricks. At Wilderman I thought I'd want a big padded bike short for the 9ish hour ride but I didn't want to have to put 'em on in T1 and I didn't want to ride with the giant wet diaper after the river fording so I went with that DeSoto bib. It was PERFECT!!! Thank you for cluing me into those.

Ian

Congrats on the race and thanks for sharing your race report, so cool. Could you share your thoughts on training for this type of event, especially your foundation and the final 8 - 10 weeks leading up to the race & any thing you would change ? I have to believe that the preparation is dramtically different than a flat 140.6 tri or even a long hilly duathlon like Zofingen.

I just found this tri when I searched for a NON-IM 140.6 distance.
I reached out to the director of Wilderman and still have questions.

Is this better on an mtb or cross bike?

Is there race support or is it self-supported?

 


Bumble Bee,
The perfect bike is probably a gravel bike with 40mm wide tires. If it rains hard I'm sure everyone will wish they were on mtbs with 2.2's but a grave bike with 40s and some clip-on aeros is the right choice.

I'm gonna say the race is "sort-of" supported. There are the odd aid stations and there's a spot on the bike where you can hit a station that holds a box that you packed and dropped the morning of the race.

I'm not sure what I could possibly say to prepare you for the "run". It's super gnarly: lots of overgrown single track, several stream sections where you have to run in the creek, it's really tough and I would say roughly half of it is unrunnable.

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

Thanks for the response.

I don't know why this race intrigues me.
Perhaps I've been watching too many docs like the Barkleys Marathons and TNGA which a guy did on a gravel bike.

I was thinking a gravel bike might be the best choice. Now to convince the wife I need another bike 😄