REGIONAL- A mild January in the North Country turned to seasonably brutal cold this past weekend, just in time for the 19th edition of one of the world’s toughest endurance challenges, the Arrowhead 135 ultramarathon, the 135-mile bike/ski/foot race from International Falls to Tower along the Arrowhead Trail.
“I got my wish – the worse, the better,” said co-race director Jackie Krueger.
Krueger wasn’t being dramatic. In fact, the annual race is timed to coincide with what is traditionally the coldest week of winter in Minnesota’s Arrowhead. It’s a test of mettle and endurance against some of the worst conditions that Mother Nature can dish out and it’s been called one of the toughest races anywhere in the world.
“Nobody wants an easy race. They want a hard race. That’s what they signed up for,” Ken Kruger, co-race director said.
The temperature when the 149 racers toed the starting line in International Falls on Monday was a frigid -27 degrees, with trail conditions favorable for those on foot and bikers but not so much for skiers as the supercooled snow grips the bottom of skis like sandpaper. Only one of the four skiers made it as far as the Elephant Lake checkpoint at Melgeorge’s Resort before dropping out. Both kick sled entries had dropped out by Melgeorge’s as well.
Hydration was a common challenge for racers in this year’s cold, with sip tubes on hydration packs and water bottles freezing up.
As of Tuesday night, 29 bikers and 37 foot racers had joined the ranks of the dropouts.
“At this point, we’re seeing a lot of bike mechanical issues with flat tires, mostly tubeless tires, and probably four or five frozen hubs,” Ken Krueger said Tuesday afternoon. “Water bladders, probably four or five were leaking very badly. I’m not aware of any frostbite. I’m not aware of any serious injuries. People are making pretty good decisions. We have awesome snowmobile guys to get them to safety, and the GPS trackers help us keep track of them wherever they are.”
This is the first year that the Arrowhead 135 has required all racers to be equipped with the trackers, which feed data to an online map that provides individual location and speed data.
It was a breakthrough year for 2011 Arrowhead Rookie of the Year cyclist Ben Doom, of St. Cloud, who’s been a consistent top-four finisher since 2016 and has completed all but one of the Arrowheads he’s raced in. This year Doom crossed the finish line at Fortune Bay Resort Casino in first place, with a time of 15 hours, 20 minutes.
“This was my last year, I’m taking a break, so it’s nice to come out on top,” Doom said.
As a veteran who’s experienced the worst the Arrowhead 135 can throw at a racer, the cold wasn’t a problem for Doom, who said that the hard snow was nice, although it got to be “a little bit like Styrofoam, so your tires stick to it.”
“It’s hard to go hard when it’s cold,” he said. “I’d rather have it cold than warm, because when it’s warm the trail is just mushy,” he said.
Doom’s hydration pack froze about five miles into the race, but he was able to defrost it without having to stop and go inside at the Gateway Store checkpoint and wait for it to melt.
On the women’s side, race veteran Kate Coward took the bike crown with a time of 19 hours, 10 minutes, placing seventh overall.
Leah Gruhn, of Duluth, who also competed in the bike race, was the fifth woman to cross the finish line, and she rode unsupported. It’s the tenth time she’s finished the race, making her the woman with the most Arrowhead finishes overall.
“Unsupported means you can’t go into any of the checkpoints, so you’re not getting the drinks and food and warmth and drop bags and water you would get otherwise,” she said. “You need to carry all your stuff from the start or be prepared to melt snow to make water and be prepared to not let certain things freeze and thaw them out if they do freeze.”
Gruhn said she chose to ride unsupported for the additional challenge, and to prepare for an upcoming 1,000-mile race in Alaska that follows the track of the famed Iditarod sled race.
Gruhn also experienced a frozen tube on her hydration pack, and didn’t have the option of going into a checkpoint to let it thaw. The first time it happened she was able to get it cleared, but the second time she couldn’t until she stopped to sleep for a few hours and thawed it with her body heat inside her sleeping bag.
Her bike also got a bit sluggish in the cold.
“My bottom bracket, which is what the crank arms touch, the pedals got to be really stiff and so it was hard to move the pedal or the crank,” she said. “Basically, it just added extra resistance. I think there was grease maybe in there that got to be too thick, which just made it exhausting to pedal, so that slowed me down a little bit.”
Brian Corgard, of Coon Rapids, took first place in the men’s foot race with a time of 34 hours, six minutes. Ellen Humberston, of Wausau, Wis. was the winner in the women’s division with a time of 42 hours, 41 minutes, placing in a tie for seventh overall.