First up, check out our interview with the Fat Bike Birkie Men’s 45K winner, Jorden Wakeley, who is also the new Men’s Great Lakes Fat Bike Series Champion!
Plus, the rumor mill was in full churn at the Fat Bike Birkie with the weekends #1 yarn being that Ned Overend would be racing on Saturday. I didn’t see him but that doesn’t mean a certain big bicycle company isn’t working on a fat-bike. Doesn’t mean they are either. Still, we all know that SRAM is offering 2 new fat-bike cranks and we doubt that they are just going for the aftermarket or custom builder route so some larger company is looking to get fat. Who will it be? We aim to find out!
On to stuff that isn’t rumors but isn’t all that well known, yet!
The Carbon Beargrease was out on the course and ridden to a 7th place finish by Ryan Horkey. I wish I’d noticed it at the event but it wasn’t until Gomez pointed it out in my Flickr feed that I finally saw it. Gomez actually got to fondle it at Frostbike so maybe he can chime in with more of his impressions.
~gomez~ I never saw the Carbon Beargrease at the race. I saw a couple of the Salsa amigos at the start, but George Kapitz told me that he saw one out on the course. When I was looking at Greg’s photos, I spied the massive carbon fork crown and super fat down-tube in the photo above. Salsa is doing a good job of keeping their awesome new bike under wraps, yet still getting it out for some real race R&D…..all 007 and stuff. Pictures don’t really do this bike justice. When these are available, you should go and see one with your own eyes.
A couple of racers were running 47mm Northpaw-S rims on their race rigs. Eric Stanke rode a pair on his 38 Frameworks bike while Mark Barrette rode a prototype pair of the still in development offset version of the Northpaw rim. I didn’t catch a good photo but another of the 38 Frameworks riders was rolling on a set of the SnoCats from All Weather Sports that 616 is offering up.
At least 3 racers were running the new SRAM XX1 compatible chainrings from Wolf Tooth Components with 2 finishing in the top 10! That is some product testing! I talked to 4th place finisher, Mike Pfeiffer (#220 above), and he told me that the 30-tooth ring he was running was perfectly suited to the hilly course.
What about after the race you ask? Well, Fat-bike.com sponsored the after party at on Saturday night at the Telemark Lodge with a bunch of giveaways, good commiseration and libation consumption. Seems a few of the boys even got frisky on their bikes! Don’t ask about the table!
Don’t forget to check out these galleries of pix from the Fat Bike Birkie!
Greg’s Flickr Photostream – http://www.flickr.com/photos/gasmith/sets/72157632982336396/
Fotos de tío Gomez – http://www.flickriver.com/photos/gomez_lakeraven/sets/72157632988819258/
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