Xterra Grand Rapids - Oct 6

I did the Torn Shirt XTERRA back in June. The bike portion was dirt roads mixed with single track. Much like road triathlons there was a very wide range of bikes in transition.

This the trail description for Yankee Springs from the MMBA website...

Trail Description
In southwestern Michigan, 30 miles from Grand Rapids, you'll find 13 miles of trail for mountain biking; parts of the hilly, wooded route are shared with hikers. If you take the first shortcut for a 5 mile ride you will avoid most of the most challenging part of the trail. It is a very wooded area and full of ravines. A lot of the trail rides along the peaks of the ravines and a crash could end up in a long fall. If you finish the trail you will feel like you have made quite an accomplishment and if you are unexperienced you should be able to tackle most trails in Michigan.

The trail includes a good variety of steep uphills and downhills with plenty of sand, rocks, logs, and roots to get in the way. Mastery of this trail would require great technique skills and endurance. For the unexperienced, you can push your bike up some hills, carefully walk down others, take breaks, and allow more experienced riders to pass.

Link to MMBA Trail Guide: http://mmba.org/trail-guide/

I signed up about 30 seconds after I got the email.

Your mountain bike will be just fine for Yankee. It's a fun, smooth flowing trail. Can be sandy at times, especially this time of the year. There are no technical sections, just some decent climbs.

Thanks, guys. I will probably hold off for a couple weeks until after I have finished Ludington, and then I might head out one night to ride part of the course at Yankee Springs. It sounds like it would be a blast.

Ron Knoll is the guy putting it on. He does Grand Haven, Bear Lake, and the new Cereal City Triathlon (this weekend). Usually his events go pretty well, in my opinion.

Or maybe, just maybe, this is the incentive to go get a new mountain bike for more training time. Everytime I go into a bike shop, I eye the mountain bikes a little too long and make my credit card uncomfortable.

I've done the Deep Lake Trails at Yankee Springs several times, but I am still very much a novice mtn biker. For someone who does few mtn bike rides (me), this course should be considered quite challenging. It is doable though, and any functioning mtn. bike should get your through it, but riding the course to get an idea for it is a good idea.
Good luck to those doing it!

I'm most likely in. I want to get through the MiTi full in two weeks though and see how quickly I rebound both mentally and physically.

Water could be chilly but with a wetsuit, I doubt it will be a problem. The GR Tri was only 62* last year and the warm up swim the week prior was even colder. I can't imagine it being any worse than that.

I'm new to MTB (just got a 29er last season), but Yankee is one my favorite courses. I like it better than Merrell and Luton because it has more straights and less winding around. Yankee it actually feels like you are going somewhere through the woods rather than looping around and around. I'm sure your bike will be great. Before I upgraded, I was riding a Trek 10 year old 4300 and it did just fine at Yankee.

How long is this run?

From the XTERRA Website...

this event will consist of a 1500 meter swim, 30 - K mountain bike and an 11 - K trail run.

I've been looking for maps of the course (run and bike) but they don't seem to be on the website. In your best guess, will the bike be entirely on the mountain bike trails or will there be some gravel road riding to make the distance? The 13 mile loop at yankee can be tiring if you push it. Adding 5 more miles of trail will make the run difficult for me. Do you think the run will be on the same trail, different trail, or will it be run on gravel roads?. I have next to zero trail running experience. This sounds like a fun triathlon to do, but I am a bit worried about the course. I've done olympic tris, 1/2 marathons, iceman and barry roubaix. This is just a bit different for me.
Thanks for any insights.

They still haven't updated the website with map information, unfortunately (either that or the links don't work).

I just picked up a new 29er. I'd like to go out and ride the trails there at Yankee Springs very soon to see what they are like. I'm certainly not going to be the fastest on my mountain bike (I am still very new to it, and to mountain biking in general). If anyone wants to join me for an evening ride there in the next week or two, please let me know. I wouldn't mind some guidance on the trails!

I'd be interested in riding sometime Brad. I just brushed off the MTB at Luton today. Looking forward to getting back to Yankee as it is my favorite course around here.

Still waiting on course maps though. Assuming the bike is a loop of the trail plus some gravel roads. Not sure about the run though.

If the weather looks okay tomorrow (40% chance of rain right now), I might head out there to check out the course. Let me know if you'd be interested.

I'm 50/50 on this now. I went out and tried the Yankee Springs course. I'm not afraid to admit it was hard for me, technically at least.

Honestly, one of the things that worries me about a race like this is how people pass back in the trails. I'd absolutely hate to be holding somebody up who is much faster than me, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to be getting off my bike to let people pass me back in there. What's the etiquette for races like this?

Hey Brad,

I have a lot of experience when it comes to MTB racing. Even at Yankee there is room to move over and let faster riders by without having to get off your bike. Just slow down and let them know they can pass. Never pay to much attention to the rider behind you because you will end up crashing. I am leaning towards doing this event but it would be my first xterra, and first triathlon. Will you be visiting Yankee again this week?

I too made it out and rode the course yesterday. It kicked my butt, but was a lot of fun. I'm not sure how they plan on making it an 18 mile course based on their maps - at best it is going to be 13-14 if you do both the warmup loop and main loop. I learned that I need to check my repair bag before I leave though as I pinch flatted after landing hard on a dropoff and only had a tube and lever but no air. Thankfully a fellow rider had a pump for me.

As for etiquette, this is something that worried me too. I talked to a couple guys who are big Xterra racers and they said to not really even worry about it. 90% of Xterra racers are super laid back and if they want to pass, they'll come up behind you and just ask to pass at the next open spot. Generally the slower rider will pull over and slow down or even stop and put a foot down if they want to let someone pass. You may get 1 or 2 aggressive riders that don't call out a pass but they said it they aren't the norm.

As of right now, I kind of doubt I will be back this week. My next opportunity to ride there would likely be if I end up doing the race on Saturday morning.

I'm also going to wait out registering until a couple days before to monitor the weather.

Half the reason I was worried about this is that I would likely be one of the earlier swimmers out of the water. I'm certainly not in shape to be the first, but by my swimming background alone, I'd imagine I'd be somewhere in the lead group. But being a pretty inexperienced (and thus slow) mountain biker, I don't want to be in a lot of faster riders' way.

Take a look at the website now. They do have course maps up. The two Strava segments that they posted are 10.4 miles and 1.7 miles, for a total of only 12.1 miles. It certainly isn't consistent with the distances they have listed. Pretty confusing, honestly.

And being only my second time out on trails, I wasn't even carrying a repair kit at all. Guess I should put some thought into that, huh?

Sunday Brad. Not Saturday. Just don't want you showing up on the wrong day Come on out... I don't want to be the only Xterra newbie out there.

I'll be there. First timer. I am glad I rode the trails twice last week-wow was it sandy. I think the warmer weather this week will make the water temp bearable. Channel 8 says 70 percent chance of rain Saturday and 40 percent Sunday. At least it wil be warm. I am glad to hear other racers will be easy going as the bike trail is very narrow in spots.

The rain will help. It rained on Saturday and I rode Sunday. It really helped with the sand. There was really only one spot that was sort of sketchy. Good luck!

I'm registered but may have to miss it. Heading up to TC for my wife's family thingy. I am being dropped in Kalkaska so I'll ride the Iceman route to TC so that part will be cool. Missing the race, not so cool.

Registered!!! Whats the deal with the no refund policy for triathlons!? Hope the weather is good enough, do Xterras typically run in rainy conditions?

It poured the night before the Torn Shirt XTERRA and it was still held. Trails were tacky to slippery, wasn't too bad. Good luck to all that are racing, have fun!

No refunds is very typical with tris. If anything, you might get a partial refund, but even that requires a month or two notice.

Yankee is pretty sandy and dries quickly so I wouldn't worry too much about rain leading up to the race. Not sure what they do if it is raining during the actual race though.

A very fun tri. The constant drizzle made the bike a challenge for me. The rocks and roots were greasy, and the wet sand was everywhere.
I either had my best ever swim, or it was a short course. I was very disappointed to hear the bike course was shortened from 18 down to 13 miles minutes before the race start. The run had to be much much shorter than 11k also(by miles).
How hard would it have been to call the ranger station at yankee springs state park and let them know packet pickup had changed. I wasted a lot of time looking for pickup, and I wasn't the only one wandering around. Eventually someone suggested trying deep lake.
Hopefully the organizers get the kinks ironed out. I had a really good time and would love to try it again.