The Fox 2022

The Fox | Gravel Bikepacking Event with a Tandem

Photo Credit: Pointed North 

We stepped into the unknown with The Fox (formally The Heck Epic). The Fox for 2022 was a 2-day & 140-mile route, and it is self-supported gravel bikepacking event (a ride to some & race for others). Lisa (my best friend, stoker, and wife) contacted Jeremy (The Fox organizer & director) to get approval to enter as a tandem team. After getting into The Fox, there were months of building up our bikecamping kit and planning for this new adventure. 

The Fox offered me a long list of "firsts" and a longer list for Lisa... for starters, we've never bikepacked! 

The Fox course is very remote in Northern Minnesota's Superior National Forest, from Finland to Grand Marais to Finland. There are no towns on route, only one bar and a handful of cabins. The event offers one checkpoint with support at the half-way point each day. Each rider is responsible for carrying their camping gear. There is no outside support, meaning there are no personal support crews anywhere on course. 

The Fox Course, day 1 & 2 shared many roads, but the middle section offered new scenes

The Bike

We got our custom Co-Motion Java late in 2021 as a 30th wedding anniversary gift to each other. Last year we inaugurated the Java with The Filthy 50, toeing the startline with only 90 miles of experience on the bike. This summer has allowed more miles and experience, but we've been challenged to keep Lisa comfortable in the stokers positions, changing and tweaking handlebars and saddle. Lisa loves Brooks saddles on a couple other bikes and is super happy with the new Brooks B-17 we got for the Java with the stokers Kinekt suspension seatpost. Even with all training rides, Day 1 of The Fox was our longest tandem ride ever at 68 miles 3,500+ ft elevation gain & ... and day 2 upped it to 69 miles with 3,400 ft elevation gain.

Our fully-loaded Java was close to 100 lbs at the start line

Friday | The Drive and Setup 

We both had the day off on Friday to pack the car and take a relaxed drive up to Finland. The back of our car was stuffed, we don't have a rack for the Java, so I took off both wheels and fitted it into the car with all our gear. We enjoyed a late lunch in Duluth at Canal Park Brewing, and didn't get much further because we can't drive through Two Harbors with out a stop at Castle Danger Brewing.

The loaded drive north

We arrived in Finland at the Wildhurst Lodge & Campground with many other Fox riders setting up for the night before the ride with a wide variety of camping options, from adventure van, to tent, to hammock, to bivy. The lodge is a very backwoods-hunter's bar with some food options, that was nice to get a light dinner without having to cook it on our camp stove. After a lot of conversations with riders we know and just met, we all bedded down for a loud night ... others at the lodge and in the campground clearly didn't need to get up early to ride 68 miles. 

Saturday | Day 1

After making a pot of coffee, we packed up our camp and loaded the Java to get to the Finland Community Center for the rider's meeting and light breakfast. Since the tandem is challenging to load in the car, we separated to get to the community center, I rode the tandem by myself and Lisa drove the car. 

The Fox offered nice breakfast burritos and other options at the morning rider's meeting, and more coffee! After some rules and instructions, we rollout around 8:45 with roughly 70 riders.

Photo Credit: Pointed North

Lisa and I had a great start to the day, the first 10 miles are broad straight roads and we had a nice tailwind allowing us to average 16-17 mph. The first big climb was at mile 23, Heartbreak Hill! That was a very accurate name, after mashing up 200 ft of 5% to 8% at 5 mph, you hit a nasty kick that ramps up past 15% and my heartrate surged to 180 bpm (I haven't hit that number in a long time). I called for the first stop of the day to allow my heart some recovery before finishing the climb.

Heartbreak Hill even has a National Forest sign!

After that we had a few miles of mellow roads, then turned north on the Sawbill Trail, this was  a slow climb up the Sawtooth range. When we turned off the Sawbill Trail, we saw our day 1 checkpoint and it was an very well supplied with ice cold Coke, water, chips, other snacks ...  and Embark Good Energy (maple syrup). I broke my own rule about trying new foods on a big ride, but I'm happy I did with this maple syrup energy drink! One little sip every hour or so was amazing fuel keeping me feeling strong through the day. Embark will be with me on all future endurance rides! 

Our biggest challenge of the whole weekend was the stoker's saddle got messed up at the checkpoint, I had been using the stoker's saddle to lift the rig to put the kickstand down ... but we found out that saddle's mounting bolts had loosened just enough for the saddle angle to change when I lifted the heavy rig. We noticed the change before rolling out, but lacked a great way to be sure we had the angle back to the correct position.

The rest of day 1 was stress-free roads, and the last 8 miles was all downhill into Grand Marias allowing some easy coasting to the campground.  

After we checked in and set up camp, we took a very short ride to claim our 'free' beers at Voyageur Brewing Company and grabbed some food.

The hardest earned 'free beers'

We got back to the campground to find that saddle position caused some damage to the stoker's "bottom bracket". I was able to get the saddle dialed in at our camp. But the injuries had us going to bed planning to DNF and thinking about ways to get back to our car. 

Getting to know our neighbor at the Grand Marais campground

Sunday | Day 2

After another loud night in a camp group, we packed up our camping gear and rode the short distance to the morning rider's meeting and breakfast. At the morning meeting, Lisa said she was feeling like she could ride day 2. We understood that there was no "kinda do it" on this course, we either get to finish line or we'd be stuck in the woods with swarms of biting flies.

Ready to start day 2 - Photo Credit: Dev

So we rushed to the showers to get changed into our bike gear and back to the start line by 7:30 for rollout. We started day 2 with a wall right out of the camp ground, ramping over 15%, before becoming a very long drag up and away from Lake Superior, gaining 1,000 feet in the first 7 miles! There were a few more steep ramps in the first 25 miles. Also, there was the technical 5-mile double-track section, we had four emergency bailouts along this section because of steep boulder climbs and deep sandtraps. I think Lisa jumped off the bike before it stopped on one of these emergency stops. 

The check point was a great break right after the double-track miles. And they were serving "The Fox", a tortilla with hummus wrapped around a pickle ... that really hit the spot! 

The Fox in the making

Happily we made the finish line with few challenges, just a few more quick stops to remove pressure from damaged areas, and we learned to post (stand) together to get rolling breaks.

Lisa's view

We enjoy an increasing pace on the final miles, it was generally down grade into Finland, but we had a headwind. With two of us putting down power, with basically the same aero profile to other riders, we were able to ride faster and pass others on the way to the finish. 

The Portrait stop by Pointed North

We started The Fox with no goals other than enjoy adventure and getting back home safely ... bonus we finished 39th & 40th (we each had our own bib) of the 64 riders that finished. Our two-day combined time was 12:15. And we are the first riders to complete this event with a tandem! 

It was great weekend adventure with an amazing group of people at The Fox, from the organizers to the volunteers to the cast of characters riding with us. 

Lisa has quickly become a serious bad-ass gravel rider, able to handle challenges in stride and never shying away from the unknown, she even bought her own gravel bike. I look forward to our upcoming adventures together! 

Here is partial list of gear we used on this ride: 

• Nemo Dagger 3-person tent
• Nemo sleeping pads
• Sleeping bag (Chris' 40 year old LL Bean; Lisa's new Kelty)
• Ortlieb panniers
• Ortlieb fork bags
• Revelate Co-Motion frame bag 
• Jelly Belly Sports Beans
• Clif Bars
• Kind Bars 

Revisiting vEveresting on Alpe du Zwift

Catching up on ride reports: vEversting February 2022

Some of you might remember my vEveresting adventure back in March 2021, mostly memorable for a night in the hospital with IVs. For those new to this challenge, here's a little background: Zwift is a great way to ride a bike on an indoor trainer and not get bored. For those that don't know Zwift, it's like a video game with your bike as the game control. There are many worlds and courses, some of the courses are based on real world roads/routes and some are totally fictional. 

I mount my bike to a Wahoo Kickr to connect with Zwift, this is a trainer that has a power meter and it controls resistance, this means that the trainer will make it harder when climbing, making you shift down through gears just like in the real world. 

Everesting is riding up-and-down the same hill over-and-over until you accumulate an elevation gain that is equal to the height of Mount Everest - 29,029 ft. With the popularity of Zwift, the concept of "virtual Everesting" (vEversting) became a thing. I got the idea that vEversting would be a good idea thanks to Zwift, Zwift encourages riders with badges for achieving challenges and the vEversting badge is one of the very last achievements I have left on Zwift. 

There are a number of climbs available in Zwift for vEveresting, I pick the iconic Alpe du Zwift - the game version of the real-world Alpe d'Huez. This is 3,398 ft per climb over 7.59 mile for an average grade of 8.5%. A rider needs to climb Alpe du Zwift 8.5 times to complete the vEversting challenge. 

Looking at my schedule, I had a limited window to get this ride done before a vacation and I had my first outdoor race shortly after vacation. So February 25 was the date that worked. 

The fresh look first thing in the morning

Looking back at my 2021 effort, I had a good idea how to pace myself. Funny thing about pacing yourself on a ride this long ... the open couple climbs feel like your not working at all. But based on past experience, I know the climbs later in the day at the same effort are going be feel brutal.

Lisa had fun setting up my riding buddy

In addition to in-game chat with other folks riding on Zwift, I was enjoying Facebook posts about my effort, and had the radio playing to keep my mind busy. Plus the Zwift display gives you lots of data to watch as you ride. 

Here's a look at the Zwift screen

There were some thoughts that my struggles on the last attempt included overheating. So, I had our two fans blowing on me the whole time to minimize the chance of overheating. 

Throughout the day I kept a basket of snacks on the table right next to the bike, this was empty by the end of the ride! Snacks included peanut M&Ms, Sports Beans, Kind Bars, and Salt Sticks. Plus water bottles with Nuun tabs (electrolyte mix), Starbucks Doubleshots, and Coke. I took a couple breaks to get whole food, like an omelette in the morning and been burrito around noon. 

When I was getting worn down and mentally fatigued after my fifth trip up the Alpe, I was super happy to have Birchwood friend Ben jump on and ride with me on the sixth climb ... and that ride up saw an improvement in my pace. It's funny but a riding buddy on Zwift is just as helpful as in the real world. 

My last trip up the Alpe, I could barely turn the pedals over. I had planned to finish the ninth climb, but my body let me know that this was not an option! But to avoid any technical issues, I went past 20,029 feet, finishing at 29,501 for the ride.

In total, it took me nearly 14 hours and I was riding (or the avatar was riding) for over 13 hours, so there was very little down time. I can finish Alpe du Zwift in under 60 minutes; but that is doing the climb one time. For vEversting, my fastest early climb was 75 minutes; and slowest 90 minutes ... I'd call that good pacing! I was able to keep my heart rate between 130 and 140 BBM for the whole effort. Other nerdy stats: power averaged 166 to 192 W on the climbs; and I kept my cadence between 80 and 90 rpm on the climbs.

After the ride I was confused by sore shoulders, upper arm, and core muscles. After thinking about it, this was because of the amount of time I spent out of the saddle, using my upper body more than I think I've ever done while biking. 

My effort was recognized in the Everesting Hall of Fame

I may try to do another Everesting in the real world ... some day .... maybe ...