5 Tips for a successful Dirty Kanza
Words of Wisdom from The Fit Chick...
The Fit Chick, Selene Yeager, has offered 5 tips for a successful Dirty Kanza. We will be exploring these 5 topics in greater detail over the next 5 weeks from industry experts. To read more from Selene Yeager visit her blog at bicycling.com.
1.
Practice your nutrition. Nothing will shut you down faster on race day
than bonking or just as bad, getting a case of gut rot (where your
stomach/GI system shut down and reject anything you try to choke down).
Both of these happen far too often because racers fail to practice their
nutrition during training. It’s easy to stop at convenience stores or
coffee shops during training rides and sit down and eat and roll off
again. But that’s not what you’ll be doing race day. Practice carrying
exactly what you’ll carry and stock at the aid stations for fuel race
day and nail down how many calories you’ll need and how you’ll get them.
The standard recommendation is 30 to 60 grams of carbs per hour. That’s
120 to 240 calories.
2.
Take 5 and only 5. If at all possible keep your pitstops to no more
than 5 minutes. The longer you stop, the harder it is to get rolling
again. Longer stops can easily tack on 45 minutes to an hour to your
total time, which is something to keep in mind if you’re trying to make
the race cutoff. Pull into the aid station, get what you need, and keep
on going.
3.
Log consistent saddle time. You’ll certainly not get up to 200 miles in
your training (nor do you really need to try). But you do need to be
very comfortable on your bike for hours and hours (and hours) at a time.
Even if you can only manage short rides during the week it will help
you acclimate to being in the saddle. If anything bothers you even a
little bit on your training rides, address it. Small niggles can blow up
to show stoppers at mile 180.
4.
Care for your contact points. Pay special attention to your butt, feet,
and hands. They will be the parts that pipe up as the day goes on.
Consider double wrapping your bars; wear shoes that have a bit of
compliance (i.e. not super stiff racing shoes), and invest in well
padded quality bike shorts.
5.
Train on the terrain. It might be impossible to simulate the Flint
Hills of Kansas, but by all means, take your bike out on rugged, unpaved
roads as part of your training. Those gravel roads are slower and more
challenging to navigate than pavement or hard packed dirt roads. It’s
important to know how to stay smooth when the road is anything but.
Helpful Hints
Helpful hints to help with your journey to Emporia...
Each
year we receive emails from some of you asking if we can provide you
with contact information for other registered entrants in your area.
That way, you could seek out traveling companions for your trek from
your home state, to Emporia, Kansas. While we understand having such
information might be helpful, we do not feel it would be appropriate to
share contact information without first having permission to do so from
each of the persons involved. So, may we suggest a couple of
alternative approaches? Please feel free to use our Facebook page to
reach out to other participants. You can also go back to our
registration page on BikeReg.com, then use the "Who's Registered" button
to find other riders from your region. By searching for those
individuals on Facebook, you might be able to contact them.
We
also often receive questions about which airport is the best option…
Kansas City, MO… or Wichita, KS. Emporia is just about equal distance
from both Kansas City and Wichita. Flying in to either airport will
work just fine. All three cities are on I-35, so driving to Emporia
from either airport is a cinch.
Another
common question involves our entry transfer procedure. You may have
noticed our registration page states “No Refunds”. We also state if you
find you cannot attend DK, we will work with you to match you up with
someone on our Wait List. In the past, what that meant was we would put
you in contact with the next name on our Wait List. Then it was up to
the two of you to work out any details surrounding payment of the
entry. Once that was settled, we would manually update our event
registration records.
However,
we’ve recently discovered a new feature that BikeReg.com has made
available to us promoters. Here is a quick description of how this will
now work…
We
created an actual Wait List on BikeReg.com, then opened up registration
for that list. Based on past history of how many transfers we process
on average, we limited that Wait List to 50 names. If you have
registered for Dirty Kanza, and now find you cannot attend, send us an
email. We’ll refund your entry fee, then pull the next name off the
Wait List and get them registered. We’ll follow this process UNTIL all
names on the Wait List have been transferred onto the list of active
riders. Once all 50 names on the Wait List have been activated, any
additional requests for refund will be denied. Our published deadline
of May 2nd for all transfer requests is still in place.
We
feel this is a good balance between us needing to know who and how many
to expect, and our need to cover up-front expenses (the reasons for no
refunds), and our desire to provide exemplary customer service. We hope
each of you will agree.
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