Ragnarök 105 - "Avoided getting crushed by the Rök"

Ed and I rode the Ragnarök 105 on Saturday April 14th.   After failing to win the entry lottery for 3 years I wasn't going to "DNS" and get "banned for life".  The organizers do a good job of making it clear that this is not going to be an easy ride, so enter at your own risk.  

Fortunately it really was the best weather of the week.   Light snow, some sleet, temps starting at 28, rising to 42, less than 40 at the finish.    

Most notable aspect of the rides was the three really nasty climbs on minimum maintenance roads that were drag-a-bike.   Imagine 6 inches of slushy snow clogging up your brakes making it tough to even push the bike.   On one hike that was nearly 500 feet of vertical for 1.1 miles we spent nearly 30 minutes pushing/dragging our bikes up the hill.     

Also some ice, horse trails, rocks, mud, pretty much all the nasty conditions you can think of.

Wish I had time to take some pictures.   Normally I try to snap a few pictures but we were fighting to stay ahead of the "Cutoff Reaper" all day. I really wasn't sure I was going to make the cutoff until we got to about 8 miles to go.  At that point I realized we didn't have anymore hikes so it was just a matter of riding in.  

Hopefully someone took some pictures and will post them on the Ragnarök website.  There was a baby snowman half way up one of the climbs hikes that really made my day.  Clearly someone had more energy than I did if they could stop and make a snowman.   Thanks for the inspiration!

I think this would be a really nice ride in the fall or spring (late spring, like June).

Like I said, we stayed just ahead of the cut off times all day and finished with 25 minutes to spare.   

Shout out to Larry from Eau Claire who rode almost the whole day with us and brought some much needed humor to the situation.  He also bought us a beer at the local brew pub afterwards as we celebrated "Crushing the Rök".  Hopefully he will join us on July 20th.

Profile below:   My GPS said 8800 feet of vertical on the day.  That needle peak at 87 miles was the hike I spoke of above.  

On the ride home, Ed and I decided that the Ragnarök 105 is now an the official automatic qualifier for the Dirty Lemming.


I guarantee that the Dirty Lemming ride will be warmer, and at a much more relaxed pace.  


Jim