Hi, my name is Daniel and I'm going to be talking about our work on improving the performance of the Picnic Signature Scheme. This was joint work with Greg from Microsoft Research. In this talk I'll be first going over the background of Picnic, so what is Picnic and how does it work internally. Then we're going to be exploring some of the parameter choices that can be made in the Picnic Signature Scheme. Finally I'll be showing you some protocol optimizations that we performed for Picnic and our new parameter set called Picnic 3 that combines all of them. In the 90s Peter Schor presented this quantum algorithm for integer factorization and discrete logarithms. And this algorithm essentially means that all of the public key cryptography that's currently in use is broken once we have powerful enough quantum computers. And these quantum computers are theoretically viable and they are already small scale prototypes that work. But currently there's a lot of engineering effort by the big players to scale up these quantum computers to sizes that can tackle much larger problems. To be ahead of this the National Institute of Standards and Technology has started a post quantum standardization project which aims to find new algorithms for cryptography that are resistant against quantum computers and attacks using them. So this project has recently entered the third round and it aims to find new algorithms for key encapsulation, public key encryption and digital signatures. So Picnic is one of these digital signatures that is a candidate in this post quantum standardization project. And over the next few slides I'm going to be showing you how Picnic works internally. At the beginning we have to talk about multipart computation briefly. So multipart computation allows a set of n players to compute a shared function on some secret inputs and arrive at a common output. And importantly the individual players in this MPC learn nothing about the inputs of any other player and they learn nothing about any intermediate values in the computation of this function. And if you choose the correct MPC system even if n-1 so all but one players collude with each other and share their information they cannot learn anything about the real values. From these MPC protocols you can actually build zero-knowledge proofs and that is a very nice idea that is called MPC in the head. And it transforms a semi-honest MPC protocol into a zero-knowledge proof of knowledge. And the general idea behind this MPC in the head approach is as follows. You have an MPC protocol with n players and this n-1 privacy so that even n-1 parties working together cannot leak anything. And the prover in our zero-knowledge proof simulates the execution of the function he wants to prove in this MPC. And by that we mean that the prover works as every single party and commits to the state of each party during the execution of this MPC protocol. The verifier then can ask the prover to open all but one chosen party and since we have this privacy property he cannot learn anything from these n-1 opened parties. But he can still verify that this n-1 open parties are consistent with each other so that he gains some assurance that the function was actually executed correctly.  From this interactive zero-knowledge proof we can build a non-interactive variant and we can do that by the means of the FIHME transformation which is a decades old standard technique where the prover instead of getting the challenge from the verifier actually computes the challenge himself. But since the challenge needs to be random and unpredictable the prover has to set the challenge to the output of a random oracle under his first message. And this transformation is approved in a random oracle model and there are also some recent results for the quantum random oracle model. Here we can see again this transformation so that the protocol is only a single message. From this non-interactive zero-knowledge proof you can actually build a signature scheme. And to do that we first pick an identification scheme where we pick a block cipher. In our case we need it to be a one-way function and we publish a public key, a single plaintext ciphertext pair where the plaintext is evaluated under the secret key and gives the ciphertext and this plaintext and ciphertext are put in the public key. Then to identify we execute a zero-knowledge proof of knowledge for the secret key. To build a signature scheme from this identification scheme we make it non-interactive via the Fiat-Chemia transformation but we also include the message in the challenge generation of this non-interactive zero-knowledge proof of knowledge. And this is a technique that's already used in existing schemes for example the Schnorr signature. The concrete instantiation of picnic as follows. In the first round of the NISPOS quantum competition there was this picnic one variant where we have low MC as our one-way function, our block cipher. And low MC is a block cipher that is especially suited for execution in MPC protocols. It has a very low amount of AND gates and these AND gates contribute most of the communication during this execution. The MPC protocol was a 2-3 circuit composition which means that we have three players and it has this property of two privacy so that two working together cannot learn anything. And the hash function was shake. And in picnic 2 which was in addition in the second round of the NISPOS quantum competition we again have low MC and shake as our building blocks but the MPC system was replaced with KKW which is an MPC protocol with a pre-processing phase. So this pre-processing phase is run before the actual execution of the MPC protocol and produces some correlated randomness. And this correlated randomness is then used in the online phase. And these two instances of picnic have very different performance characteristics. So as you can see picnic 1 has very fast signing and verification times at around 1 millisecond but the signature size is around 30 kilobytes. When using picnic 2 the signing and verification times are much higher but the signature size is lower at around 12 kilobytes. So we are interested in improving these trade-offs and therefore we are going to be exploring this KKW proof system used in picnic 2 further. So this KKW proof system has a few important parameters the number of MPC parties that are used in the protocol the number of parallel repetitions and then the number of online phases that are opened to the prover. Add to the verifier. Using all of these three parameters gives you exact formulas for the security so we of course want to have for example 128-bit security and we can also calculate the resulting signature size from this parameters but the concrete speed is a bit harder to predict. You can use implementation techniques such as packing N parties into one CPU register to gain a lot of speed up. And we can try to approximate this by counting the number of hashing operations and similar stuff but the real-world performance of an optimized implementation is what is most interesting for comparison. And so what we did first in our work is implement a lot of different parameters and looked at the trade-offs in terms of signing and verification speeds and we looked at the optimized implementation so that we can really compare these numbers. And as we can see here the first row gives the current parameters of picnic 2 and we can see that if we reduce the number of parties we gain a small increase in signature size but a much larger increase in signing and verification times. So these trade-offs can be worth it and will be a part of this building block for picnic 3. Another set of parameters that we are interested in are those of lowMC so lowMC is not a fixed block cipher, it's actually a family of block ciphers and it's parametrizable on pretty much every parameter so the block size, the key size, the number of S-boxes per round and also importantly to allow data complexity for an attacker. And this is very interesting in picnic since we only ever reveal a single plain text cipher text pair to an attacker and this eliminates a large class of attacks. And the original exploration of the lowMC parameter space focused on block and key sizes that are equivalent to the security levels but we expanded this search to include instances with a full S-box layer and what are these instances with a full S-box layer? So we observed that instances that have a full S-box layer so do not have a partial S-box layer that has some amount of S-boxes and the rest of the S-box layer is the identity function but has a full S-box for so that every bit is going through an S-box. The problem is that the S-boxes are of size 3 bits and this does not fit nicely into 128 and 256 bits so therefore we propose to move to new state sizes of 129 for L3 this works out perfectly and for L5 we drop down one bit to 255. Let's talk about some of the protocol optimizations that we have formed for this MPC protocol. So in the KKW MPC protocol we have an invariant that is true for each wire in our circuit. We have that the real value that is underlying this wire is masked and each party holds one share of the mask. This linearity means that XOR gates can be computed for free and AND gates need multiplication triples like in many other MPC systems and these multiplication triples are defined as follows so we have four sum masks A and B we have that a valid multiplication triple is that this multiplication triple is the sum of all the multiplication triple masks is the product of the sum of the individual shares of A and B and in contrast to some other MPC protocols these multiplication triples are circuit dependent so this multiplication triple here is specific to the input wires A and B and this actually means that during the pre-processing where we calculate this multiplication triples we have to also evaluate the whole circuit and this is where also a large part of the cost comes in during this pre-processing as I said we are generating this multiplication triples and for each AND gate with some input wires A and B and output wires C we read the masks from the random tapes each party has a random tape that we read all of the random values from and if you just read this masks A B and the multiplication triple from these random tapes we are not guaranteed that this actually is a valid multiplication triple that fulfills our previous condition so what we do during this pre-processing is we calculate the error in this multiplication triple and then we fix the last party's random tape so that this error is fixed and the multiplication triple is a valid triple for these masks and we observe that the error in this multiplication triple only depends on the sum of all parties' masks and not the individual values of the masks so one optimization we can perform is that we apply any linear gates following the AND gates only to the sum of these masks instead of the individual masks and while in general this might not seem like a big improvement due to the design of low MC which has a very dense and heavy linear layer this actually saves a lot of time during pre-processing and results in 1.5 times faster signing and verification the second optimization is that we can look at the online phase and in the online phase the parties use the the output masks, the fresh output masks from the AND gate and they have to calculate the linear transformations that are applied to these masks through the linear layer and then through the key addition until they arrive at the next S-box layer and can perform the procedure for the AND gate so what we propose is a slight change to the pre-processing and that we instead of sampling this fresh output mask see here at the output of the AND gate we sample the fresh output mask at the input of the next layer's AND gate then we can calculate backwards applying the inverse linear transformations until we arrive at the S-box layer and fix our multiplication triples that way and this optimization enables us an improved online phase where the parties can actually just read their input mask that they need for this AND gate from their random tape and the linear operations are already baked in so to say from the pre-processing phase so they do not ever need to calculate this linear layer in the online phase so this linear layer here only gets computed during pre-processing and the third optimization is that at the end of the MPC protocol the parties have to broadcast their share of the output so that they can check that the unmasked output is actually equal to the public key that was given for picnic and our observation is that there are only linear operations between the last S-box layer of LoMc and the final ciphertext and what we can actually do is combine the communication for the S-box AND gates for this last S-box layer and the output into one single communication and this new communication can be computed from the previous old communication so there is no leak of additional information and this optimization saves N bits of communication where N is the block size per MPC instance and this is reflected in a lower signature size so let's finally talk about Picnic 3 and Picnic 3 is a new set of picnic instances combining this previous improvement so first we are taking a trade-off of using N is equal to 16 parties in the KKW MPC protocol we're using a LoMc instance with a full S-box layer which also provides better performance then we apply all of the present optimizations to the MPC protocol and the existing security analysis for Picnic 2 is still applicable since this new structure of Picnic 3 is very similar so let's have a quick look at the performance of Picnic 3 so here we compare the performance to the old existing Picnic instances and as we can see that Picnic 3 has signature sizes that are very close to the old Picnic 2 signature sizes so only about 2% larger but the signing and verification times are much much faster whereas the signing time is about 8 times faster and the verification time is about 5 times faster in the last row of the table we also give an additional instance of Picnic 3 that has one more internal round of LoMc to provide a larger security margin against any future crypto-analytic attacks on LoMc and as we can see this has not a very big impact on signing and verification times but a little bit of an increase in signature size in the NISPOS Quantum Sanitization Project there's also another submission called Sphinx Plus our security is only based on a security of symmetric primitives whereas Sphinx Plus is using hash functions for their security properties and Picnic is using hash functions for their transformations and also LoMc is the block cycle and we can compare the performance of Picnic 3 to Sphinx Plus instances here at the 128-bit security level and we can see that the Picnic 3 parameter set provides faster signing times than Sphinx Plus and slower verification times for the signature size it has a good middle ground between the fast Sphinx Plus instances which have a signature size of about 17 kilobytes and the small Sphinx Plus signatures which have a much lower signature size at 8 kilobytes these have very large signing times so we can see that Picnic 3 instances provide competitive performance to the existing Sphinx Plus instances so in conclusion we revisited the parameter choices for the Picnic Signature Scheme we presented some optimizations for the MPC protocol and finally proposed new Picnic 3 instances and these Picnic 3 instances provide 8 to 14 times faster signing times than previous Picnic 2 instances and about 5 times faster verification than previous Picnic 2 instances while the signature size is very comparable at around 2% larger and we implemented these Picnic 3 instances into the optimized implementation which can be found at this GitHub link and these Picnic 3 instances are also part of the round 3 submission to NIST where Picnic has advanced to the third round as an alternate candidate in the signature category in the full paper you can also find more on optimized instances for interactive verification and some benchmarks for alternative hash functions that provide better performance than shake such as the kangaroo12 hash function some application for future work is concerning the cryptanalysis of LoamC because this Picnic scenario has a very specific attacker scenario where we only ever reveal a single plaintext type of text pair to an attacker and this is a scenario that is not very often considered in previous cryptanalysis and therefore there is an ongoing LoamC cryptanalysis challenge with a total price fund of 100,000 US dollars can be found at this link at loamcchallenge.github.io and if you are interested in symmetric cryptanalysis and want to broaden the field of this very specific scenario have a look at this page another area for future work of Picnic is an optimized implementation for embedded platforms where in this work we only focused on x86 targets and also our optimized implementation is optimized for this on these embedded platforms we also have to consider resource constraints that we have lower memory and maybe also even lower flash storage and this is a concern that has to be addressed in implementations especially with complex implementations such as the MPC simulation in Picnic 3 but this is an other area where future work can focus on and with that I will end my presentation here and I hope to have brought you this topic of this new optimizations to Picnic 3 to Picnic and the new Picnic 3 instances a little bit closer thank you and goodbye


Ranger Bill, warrior of the woodland, struggling against extreme odds, traveling dangerous trails, fighting the many enemies of nature. This is the job of the guardian of the forest, Ranger Bill. Pouring rain, freezing cold, blistering heat, snow, floods, bears, rattlesnakes, mountain lions. Yes, all this in exchange for the satisfaction and pride of a job well done. You know, even in this modern day of scientific thinking, there are those who still hold to some of the old philosophies. Ideas such as, when you get older, you can't learn new ideas, that the people in the out-of-the-way parts of the country are less intelligent than the folks in the city areas, and so forth. Now, some of these thoughts come from our young people of today. Some would call them know-it-alls, but I disagree. I'd rather say these attitudes come from youthful energy and impatience. Our story today is wrapped around these things, a battle between youth and age, the university and the backwoods. It's the story, an old horse learns new tricks. Boy, I'm glad the teacher's convention is on. We'll have a long weekend and I can be out here. Classroom was never like this, I can tell you. Oh, boys, the smell of the pines and the fresh air. I know how you feel, pal. It's murder to have to stay inside a lot after you used to being out in the Lord's country. Now, you speak plenty truth, but education necessary. Yes, Grey Wolf, it surely is most necessary.  Don't get me wrong, fellas. I'm not belittling education. I intend to get all I can and then some. Yes, sir, but those pines sure smell good. You think we make second out-curve before Dr. Bill? I hope so, Grey Wolf. We'd better step on the gas, though. Come on, Storm Boy, let's go. What's the matter, Storm? Easy, Storm Boy. What's wrong with Storm? I don't know. I'll take a look at his hooves. Easy, boy. Ah, hooves all right, Bill. Yes, they're in perfect condition. I don't see anything that would be irritating them. Boy, he sure doesn't look like his old self, suddenly. He hasn't any zip. I don't like this, any. We'd better make camp right here and now.  Oh, big boy. Let's cooperate. We'll finish your examination in a few minutes.  Don't bite my hands. Watch him, Bill. He's bashful about letting folks look at his teeth. You're telling me. Storm, open your mouth now. That's a good fella. Now, shine a light inside, pal. We'll have a look. How's this? That's fine. Mouth in good condition. You look like he's in good health so far. Yes, he does. Okay, Storm, we're all through. You can go and raise now. There is alien, that wonderful horse. There's something we can't see. It's deep down inside. Yeah, you're right, old friend. Storm is sick and we can't tell what's wrong. Jumping grasshoppers? What are we going to do? We've got to get Storm to a veterinarian. Tonight? No, not unless he suddenly takes the serious turn for the worse. We'll get him to the vet at the crack of dawn. You plan to watch him all night, Bill? Right. You fellas go ahead and turn in. I'll keep an eye on him. We take turns watching Storm. Nonsense. I'll stay up with him.  But why can't we take turns? Leave him be for now, sonny. He'll change his mind after he gets tired enough. Three o'clock in the morning. You haven't slept a wink yet. Yeah, I know, pal. Well, why not let me set up while you sleep? I'll be glad to do it. I'm glad to stay up, too. You get sleep now. Plenty quick. Yeah, I think I'll accept your offer. Oh, good. I told you he'd give in. Listen to Sans when he got tired enough. Go back to sleep, you old walrus. I've been sleeping with one eye open all night. Yeah, I know. Who do you think you're fooling? Michelle! You're not look worse. I don't think his condition has changed much. Oh, that's good news. Boy, it's bad enough when an old horse gets sick. What a four-year. Why, he's in the prime of life. You said it. Wake me up at the crack of dawn. And I mean crack. Fire feels good. Boy, there's a real chill in the air. I've been to her just around Mountain Hill. Yeah, you said it. Pretty soon we'll have the old snowmobile out. Hey, Storm's lying down. Maybe he rest. I hope so. Should we take a look at him? Just to be on safe side. Come on. Storm, you okay? I wonder if he's really resting, Grey Wolf. I think he too weak to stand on feet. We find out plenty soon. Storm, get up, boy.  Storm. He wants too many can't.  I think you speak more truth than we know. Do you really think he's dying? Look that way. Oh, no. Not Storm. I think we better wake Bill up right now so he can do something for Storm. Do you think that he's really... Yes, pal. Storm is slowly dying. But how can this happen? Boy, one day he's fine and healthy. Next day he's passing slowly out of the picture. What's wrong with him? It's my opinion that the beautiful animal's got something working on his spine and nervous system. You have something there, old timer. He's lost control of his legs. Do you think he's got a tumor? Could be. Can't anything be done for him?  I'm not giving up yet, pal. Not good. What you plan to do, Bill? Yeah. Tell us. It'll be daylight in another hour. I'm gonna call a cargo helicopter and have him land in that clearing over there. Oh, but that's 300 yards away. How are we gonna get Storm to the copter? Well, improvise a skid and roll him on to it and then pull the skid with your horses. Oh, that sounds great. How are you going to get Storm on the whirl of magic?  What do we wait for? Henry, you'll find the best way for us to pull the skid to the clearing. When you've done that, break camp and get the gear packed. Right. Stompy, Gray Wolf, you fellas start cutting saplings and young trees to make the skid. We do plenty quick. I'll radio for the copter and figure out some way to mark the clearing for the pilot. Then I'll help with the skid. Come on, let's get to work. I want to get Storm out of here as quickly as possible. Yeah, sure. What a voice, King Bill. Yes, pal? Do you think that the Lord would hear my prayer for Storm? Can we pray for animals? Well, I don't know of any reason why we can't pray for animals, Henry. The Lord made them just as He made us. They're part of His creation. I don't remember anything in the Bible that restricts what we pray for. As long as we're sincere and pray in faith, believing that what happens is the Lord's will. Thanks, Bill. We pray for people we love or care about. I don't see why the Lord wouldn't hear prayers for animals we love. After all, they can't help themselves. You're right, young fella. I think you'll find us all doing the same thing as we work. Praying? Yep. Now let's get to work. Henry, will you run down to the clearing and bring Barney up here? We can use another man to get Storm on the skid. Right. There's no reason why he should wait around in the clearing by his lonesome. How you coming, old timer? Yeah, gotta whittle this down a bit. Oh, right. All finished. Ah, me too. Looks like you're taking the last hitch in the Lysium, son. Yep. There we are. This skid ought to carry Storm. Ah, that right. Henry and Barney come back soon. Then we move Storm. Right. In the meantime, let's get ropes fastened to the saddle horns of your horses and get ready to move out quickly. As soon as Storm's on the skid, you can bring your horses in and I'll tie your ropes to the skid and we'll head for the copter pronto. How are we gonna do this, Bill? He's a big horse. You said it. We'll roll him over and onto the skid. Henry and Barney, you take his four legs. Grey Wolf and Stomper, you take his rear legs. I'll handle his head and shoulders.  Right. You sure? Yep. You all ready now? When I say go, easy Storm, boy. We're trying to help you. You all ready, fellas? All right, go. Easy, Storm. One more.  Easy, fella, easy. There we go. Whew! That rascal weighs plenty, all right, but we got him on. I think we do. Good job. Even Storm know we try to help him. Good work, boys. Now get your horses and we'll get Storm aboard the copter. May I use your radio, Barney? Sure. Help yourself. Bill Jefferson calling State University Station. Ranger Bill Jefferson calling State U over... State U calling Ranger Bill Jefferson. Over. I want to talk to Dr. Clam of the veterinary school. All right, sir. You'll have to stand by until we can get him to the station. Over and standing by. I'll stand by. Thank you. Over and standing by. Where are we going to land? There are several small pastures close to the agricultural college. We can sit down in one of them and we'll pull Storm up to the hospital. Then what? How are you going to get him inside? They've got power lifting devices there, Barney. He'll be able to handle a big fellow easily. Oh, good. We should be at State U within half an hour. That'll be fine. I'm going back to check with the fellas. Let me know when Dr. Clam's on the air. Hello, Dr. Clam. That's right, doctor. I'm in a helicopter with my horse and he's very sick. Wrong? No, I don't. It seems to be all internal. He's one of the best in the country, pal. You'll find out what's wrong. That's one thing for sure. I hope so. Storm getting bad fast. Oh, see, he is. That sling, they've got him rigged up in his support in his whole weight. Yeah. Completely lost the use of his legs. Well, what's the answer, Dr. Clam? I wish I knew. What? You mean to tell me you can't find out what's wrong, doc? That's what I mean to tell you. You're right, Bill. It is something internal, but I can't find a thing wrong with that animal. Now what do we do? Yes, doctor. Now what do we do? Whatever you do, it got to be soon. Well, I'm going to X-ray. No, you're talking sins. Them there array machines will find it. Don't get overly optimistic, old-timer. There's some conditions that, well, even X-rays won't find. We'll just have to hope for the best. How long will it take before we'll know for sure? Oh, four or five hours. Four or five hours? He'll be dead by then. Well, there's no immediate cause for alarm. He's lost his power of locomotion, but he'll live for a few days yet. Now let's get out of here and let the man work. There's no sense in us standing around here. You said it, sonny.  Now let's take a walk around and look at the farm. And maybe we'll feel better. Boy, I never knew four or five hours could be so long. You ain't just joking there, young fella. I suppose it'll be five instead of four. I don't know, old friend. What are we going to do if the doc can't find out what's wrong by X-ray? We not worry about next bridge to cross until we come to it. Yeah, that's a good idea.  Hey, here comes the doc. It seems to be lost deep in thought. He ain't seen us yet. How'd you make out, doctor? Oh, I didn't see you. Oh, it's times like these that make me wonder what we really know. It turns out to be very little or nothing. You mean it doesn't look so good for Storm? No good at all. The X-rays didn't show a thing other than he was put together correctly at birth. Jumpin' catfish! You're supposed to be the best vet in this part of the country and have the best possible equipment here for treating sick animals. You tell us you can't find out what's wrong. Henry, hold your tongue. This man is only human. I'm sorry. Oh, that's all right, Henry. I'm just as disturbed as you are that we can't find the answer. Let's go take a look at our four-footed friends, shall we? What are we gonna do? Hold his hoof while he dies? We've got a horse in our hands that's dyin' in his primal life. And not one of us can do a thing about it. Not a thing. Bill, I'd say he won't live more than three or four days in this condition. I'd like your permission to do an autopsy on him after he dies. We can't help him, but we might be able to save other horses with the same sickness. Dr. Clem, would you mind if I called in another veterinarian? Why, I... Well, I don't know. Who is the man? Jeremiah Sutter from the village of many pines. Bill, I'm surprised at you. Why, that man isn't a vet. He just calls himself one.  That's beside the point.  Oh, yes, I've heard stories about those, too. If they're fact and not fiction, well, the man's had some pieces of good fortune. You still haven't answered my question. I can't. I'll have to talk to my superior. Will you do that, please? Well, Bill... I don't know. Don't you think you'd better reconsider? Dr. Clem, need I remind you that storm is my horse? All right. I'll see what I can do. How long does it take for that Dr. Clem to ask whoever he's going to ask? Plenty long time now. If you hear about that crazy ranger asking Dr. Clem if he could have the old hermit from many pines brought in here to look at his horse? Yeah, he must have holes in his head. The dean would never allow a quack like Jeremiah Sutter to come in here. The students are hotter than collar about it, too. And they might as well call in an Indian medicine man as calling that guy. Yeah, you said it. If they let him come, I'm going to do plenty of squawking and then right to the dean. How you like that? They talk like they have hole in head, not us. Hey, maybe that's Dr. Clem coming now. Bill, I have talked with the dean and, uh... Well, his answer is no. Where's the dean's office? I'll be glad to show you, but I know it won't do any good. We'll see about that. Let's go. Dean Rogers, this is Bill Jefferson. Well, Mr. Jefferson, apparently you feel that your powers of persuasion are greater than Dr. Clem's? That's beside the point.  Well, he's an old hermit of the woods, Mr. Jefferson. I don't think that he'd be able to help your horse and also we'd be the laughing stock of the school. Dean, my horse is dying. It's almost the same thing to me as if one of my men were in the same situation. You mean you think more of your horse than you do of your men?  I don't wear such a device. My hearing's perfectly normal. Then you heard what I said before. An animal gets to be a part of you when you live with him day in and day out on the trail and the range. He's been a faithful friend, always willing to do my bidding. And I'll be hanged by the neck if I'm going to let him die without first exhausting every avenue of help. That's all very touching. The answer's still no. I'm sorry to say that your professional jealousy is showing. What did you say? Need I repeat it? If you were as big a man as you think you are, you'd be glad to have quack Sutter grace this campus. Or are you afraid you might learn something from him? Bill, aren't you getting a little strong? And how? I know what I'm saying and I'd say it for anyone sick animal. All right, Mr. Jefferson, bring in Jeremiah Sutter. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I hope he can help your horse. But I rather doubt it. He probably hasn't read a vet medical journal or book since Hector was a pup. Now, easy storm. Let old Doc here take a look and find out what's wrong. Why is Doc Sutter spending so much time on Storm's neck? I don't know, pal. Dr. Clam? Yes, sir. How quick can you set up for surgery? Oh, 20 minutes. Would you do that, please? Yes. Sid, Rick, get the operating gear ready and set up in 20 minutes. Plenty of undergraduates to help you. Yes, sir. Right. Thank you, Doctor. Have you, uh, made a diagnosis, sir? Yes, I have. Wonderful. Will Storm recover, Mr. Sutter? I believe so. There's no reason why he shouldn't. But this will be dangerous surgery. The name of common sense, sir, what is your diagnosis? Yeah, don't keep us hanging in the air so long, Jeremiah. This animal has an intramuscular tumor. And the tumor is pressing on the spinal column in his neck. If it isn't malignant, he'll be fine as soon as we remove it. What are the chances of it being malignant? Very small, Bill. He's a youngster, and I think we've caught it in time. Thank the Lord. How did you find it? We couldn't with X-ray. Out in the backwoods, we don't have X-rays, Doctor. We have to see through our fingertips. Well, there we are, Bill. As soon as that youngster comes out of his neck, he'll stand up on his feet again. His feet and legs will do as his brain orders, and the orders won't be short-stopped by the tumor. You don't know how much we appreciate what you've done, Jeremiah. I'll find some way to express my thanks. Is the tumor malignant? No, not in the least. I've had several cases of these fast intramuscular tumors in my time. They're nasty unless you get them quickly enough. Isn't it wonderful to know that storms go away You said it, young fella. I kind of tickle all over inside as the joy bubbles bounce around. I'm pretty happy, too. You do great operation, Jeremiah. Yeah, that's what I came for. I'll pack my bag and go back home now. The job's done. Oh, Mr. Sutter. Oh, Dean Rogers. I have an apology to make. We've done you a great injustice, sir, and I want to be the first to admit it. Your ability and knowledge are remarkable. Well, thank you, Dean. But I came early to do a job. Bill, who is this man, really? Jeremiah Sutter. Backwood's veterinarian. Really. Oh, come on, Bill. I know better. He's right, Doctor.  Come out some time and visit my lab and see my library. Us hill country folk keep up to date, too, you know? Yeah, sure do, Jeremiah. The trouble with these fellas is that they think you can't teach an old horse new tricks. You're right, Stumpy. Sometimes we do feel that an old horse can't be taught new tricks, but I'd say it depends on the horse whether he wants to learn or not. Say, aren't you glad you're here? Say, aren't you glad the Lord worked things out by having Jeremiah Sutter write handy when he was so desperately needed? I am. Well, see you next week for more adventure with... Range! Program today gives me, Ranger Bill, just a little time to talk to you moms and dads about our adventure stories and why we're on the air. We all know that every time a boy or girl listens to one of our programs, he gets some impression of the Christian life and the character of the people involved. So we must be constantly alert to guard the image that's presented, to make it realistic and truthful, neither setting up false ivory tower heroes for fellas and gals to aspire to, or creating the impression that Christianity is an impossible goal in this day and age. We also try to present Christians as people, something which they are. The faults of a Christian don't have to be glossed over. He's human too. So we try to present to you, the listener, a story that from your point of view is a factual photograph of a way of life, namely the Christian way, and showing individuals living, seeing, understanding this way of life, or maybe missing it completely. Let's all be honest before God, so that truth can survive, and our young people will turn out to be the good citizens and real Christians that we want them to be.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com coming at you with 2021 Panini Contenders draft picks football two box random pack break number five so we're gonna open up we're gonna select one of these two boxes here I'm gonna open them up we're gonna label the packs with the numbers and then we'll randomize your names randomize the pack numbers and match you up and then rip open the packs and hopefully you'll get something awesome big thanks to this group of people here for getting in on the action let's flip over to this screen right here let's select a die select that one and we'll go one two three for the top two boxes and four five six for the bottom two boxes and it'll be one so it'll be the top set right here and this will be before break six now let's open these up the first box the each box has an autograph of course and everything ships what's that check my cabinet there maybe in a cup or something like that top left sure all right there's everyone there there's all the packs properly labeled now we got names we got pack numbers let's roll it let's randomize it and assign you a pack number after one and a four five times one four and fifth and final time after five got gale down to high and then one and a four five times for the pack numbers one two three four and five for five times we got ten down to two all right gale with ten kreg with five gale with one Michael P with eight gale with six Michael with eleven gale with nine Michael with three Oliver with four gale with twelve Adam with seven and time with two we're gonna sort this by actually did this gale kind of has a lot of packs might just be easier if let's sort this by column a so I think we're gonna go in alphabetical order just so we can group all of gale's packs together at once and all of Michael's packs together at one sorry Oliver short end this time Adam with pack seven so we're gonna print out these labels here you can fast forward through this party if you're watching the replay Saturday the 29 so let's flip back this way me too SC I hope we're gonna have a great night of breaks here all right Adam with pack seven which is the first pack right on top there good luck right in the middle and it's it's Jamar a jet a Jamar Jefferson game day ticket autograph did he end up Jamar Jefferson from Los Angeles strapped in the seventh round of the NFL draft or running back and he he's with the Lions there you go local kid where did he go whoa he went to high school right down the street Adam he went to Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach oh before transferring to Harbor City High School senior year then went to Oregon State here's the rest there you go local guy Craig with pack five which should be down here autograph is gonna be a Sante Samuel junior and a numbered card right here too college ticket autograph Sante Samuel junior is a charger second round pick it's a good way for me to learn all these new new faces the 2021 draft class 2021 breaks football break so we'll do all season on this camera Jordan six out of ten there you go Craig and then we've got the gale group here and after that time we'll be next so gale has packed ten one six nine and twelve ten one six nine and twelve ten one six nine and twelve ten one six nine and twelve set up the rest to and I'm with two Michael you have eight eleven and three eleven and three and then last but not least will be Oliver Smith and pack four but first gale good luck out thank you and the autograph is is Anthony Schwartz see where he ended up Anthony Schwartz a third round pick not bad third round pick went to the Browns behind Travis Etienne is gonna be a little ding on the corner here but there's a Kylan Hill so rattled around in the pack there which is unfortunate Hill is a seventh round pick running back went to the Packers just a few a few picks away from Mr. Relevant we've got this guy it is divine Diablo dablo maybe 42 out of out of 99 intervention divine intervention got Chris Herman back there went to my Raiders I was like I knew this name looks familiar safety out of Virginia Tech Raiders trying to rebuild that that's that defense all of it really right next pack you know it's gonna be it's gonna be a Kentucky player it's gonna be Quentin Bohana looks like he's a big dude Quinn Bohana sixth round defensive tackle out of Kentucky from a pick from Detroit went to the Dallas Cowboys in six round six four three fifty seven big dude then we have Iowa game day ticket signatures out of ten Amir Smith Marseille see where he ended up wide receiver out of Iowa fifth round pick to the Vikings all right Gail thank you that's your group we'll bag all these up a little after the break all right next up was Hyme pack to good luck we have we have from pit Rashad Weaver Rashad Weaver defensive end out of pit went to the Titans in the fourth round Michael P with a few packs good luck and we've got Tony Polion college ticket autograph looks like Tony Polion was not drafted it's a tight end but ended up being picked up by the Ravens how many tight ends to the Ravens have under squad like ten like they've got a million tight ends on that team there's the autograph behind school colors Trey Lance is gonna be Shaka Tony I know he was drafted Shaka Tony seventh round pick went to the Washington football team final pack see a big one here our man school color Zach Wilson is this guy it's Benjamin St. Eust college ticket autograph and Eust was a third round pick also for the Washington football team and there's a campus ticket Patrick Holmes yeah we did see the campus ID a few breaks ago last night forget who it was all right Michael thank you appreciate you giving this a go all right and last but not least Oliver Smith with pack four good luck what do we got here we've got a Devonta Smith nice Devonta Smith looks like an on-card rookie auto for Oliver Smith last but definitely not least he was one of he was drafted in the top ten he was drafted ten nice some nice ink there and a good way to finish this off I'm Joe for jaspies case breaks comm thanks for breaking thanks for watching and I'll see you next time for the next break bye


The private sector makes. The public sector takes. This relationship between the two largest economic categories is incredibly imbalanced and must mean that one remains subservient to the other. With its monopoly on violence, the public sector is the obvious winner in this fight, but it's not that black and white. Often at the top of both of these institutions, the lines between the two are incredibly blurred. Those at the top of the private sector bribe those at the top of the public sector and then the top of the public sector give special favours to those at the top of the private sector. You still following? The powerful look after each other across the boundaries of their sectors to protect their own power and monopolies. The largest private industries get massive tax breaks which others don't, receive land taken by force with eminent domain, receive massive bailouts when their profits turn to losses, are the first recipients of fiat credit expansion and many more. All of these privileges and special interests are granted to protect the private oligarchs from their greatest threat. Competition. It is a severe mistake to believe that big businesses the likes of Amazon and the US federal government are on opposing sides. Their interactions are much more along the lines of you scratch my back I'll scratch yours. The most damaging industry for this is the pharmaceutical one. Big pharma lobbies absurd amounts of money in order to be granted intellectual property privileges over their medicines, literally turning them into a monopoly where they otherwise wouldn't be and once they're free from competition they can charge whatever price they like regardless of what a free market would actually pay for it. With this in mind it's easy to see how the rich stay rich regardless of whether or not their poor entrepreneurship should have bankrupted them or at least knocked them down a few pegs but this will not always be the case. As it stands the tech industry has its own oligarchy such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. These should not even be called tech companies, the tech that they sell is minuscule compared to their real product, your data. Facebook's server upkeep could be entirely funded by the money that they make in ad revenue but their real bread and butter is collecting your location, browsing history and spending preferences to then sell on to other data companies who use it to monetize your internet usage. You do not see a penny of this massive industry worth billions that you actively participate in but there is a solution. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer technology used by cryptocurrencies where everyone can see how much of a currency exists, how quickly it's being generated, the volumes that are being moved etc so that everyone can understand what is being done with their money and one organization like a bank doesn't have a monopoly on this information. This blockchain technology could easily be used to store the data that you create by using the internet and data collection companies would have to pay you before having access to your data. So Facebook would literally pay you to use their site and still make huge profits. For all the same reasons that crypto decentralizes currency it can decentralize data. This technological decentralization is what will make government obsolete. If there was full transparency like this and everybody could always see what the government is doing they would not be able to get away with half of the things that they do currently. The transparency starts with money. Cryptocurrency is truly revolutionary and will make government money obsolete. There is no doubt in my mind at all. When governments control money they can control every single thing you do with it without you even knowing. Aside from that they can confiscate it from you at will, they can inflate it at will which devalues your money, they can print as much as they like to feed their special interest oligarchs and then they force you to use their inferior money and pay taxes in it. Well now they can't. The only thing you will ever need now to own money that can't be rotted away by inflation confiscated and prescribed are two things. A digital wallet and a VPN. When you have these two things you can take your money anywhere in the world on a USB stick. You can buy goods from around the world with minimal fees and bureaucracy. That money that you turn into crypto is forever free providing you don't lose it. The other possibilities of blockchain are endless. Without a monopoly over money the public oligarchs are severely limited in their ability to prop up the private oligarchs and vice versa. The key to freedom is decentralization of everything. When you start decentralizing money you open up avenues for so much more decentralization of power to take place. After that localities like states and counties aren't tethered to a giant welfare warfare state and can become self-determining and self-governing. Communities can become self-sufficient and provide for themselves and this keeps happening until you reach the smallest facet of power, the individual. When the individual cannot be forced into subservience by the oligarchs they are free. Freeing the information will free the people. When governments and data barons cannot continue with their lack of transparency they will finally be checked and forced to behave responsibly and the more responsible a government becomes the smaller it becomes and that is the meaning of decentralizing power. When power and information are held by self-serving monopolies there is tyranny. When power is held by private individuals there is liberty and this diffusion of power is already underway and this liberty is inevitable. Even now physical means of production are becoming greatly decentralized and no technology typifies this more than the rise of commercially affordable 3D printers. Now with a $200 printer, $30 of filament and some patience you can make a firearm in your own home. With this the government's monopoly on violence quickly becomes obsolete. When the government doesn't have a monopoly on violence and money their coercive power disintegrates at rapid speed which is their power to suppress free market competition for their special interests. Technological progress by its own nature will reach a velocity faster than government regulation can keep up with it. After enough time this can make the entire system of coercive governance obsolete and eventually cease to exist. Anarchists normally have two ideas of how anarchism will be achieved. Either the system will become so big that it collapses or that it must be overthrown in a violent revolution. The truth is that both of these options involve disaster, bloodshed and no reason to believe that a tyrannical government will not immediately re-emerge. However this peaceful and wonderful technological revolution is inevitable. It will happen and there's nothing the government can do to stop it and it might even be too late for them to try and slow it down with red tape now. You can already own independent currency, you can already subvert gun control. I'm reminded of the Ein Rand quote, the question isn't who is going to let me, it's who is going to stop me. Now nobody can stop you because nobody can stop the signal. The foundation for this revolutionary epoch already lies in the public domain and it cannot be stopped. So here are the keys to freedom that you can get right now. Bitcoin, a 3D printer and a self-sustaining household to provide yourself with energy, food and water. If you have these few simple things, you are as decentralized as an individual can possibly be at the moment and therefore as free as you can possibly be. You will make yourself well ahead of this coming curve and this will eventually become the standard way of living. Rural and urban areas will be liberated by technology, they will govern themselves and then ultimately the individual will govern themselves completely free of compulsory coercion. Karl Marx and Hegel were right in one thing, humanity is progressing to an inevitable point. Marx wrongly saw this point as being communism but with our modern grasp of technological development we can see that this point is in fact individualism. This individualism will not come out of the bad elements of society expanding and then collapsing, it will come as these detrimental institutions wither away as they're overtaken by productive ones. Remember what I said at the beginning, the private sector makes and the public sector takes. The maker sector will become so advanced that it can't be forcibly taken from and the taker sector will be starved out of existence. This whole exposition I've just done is my vision for how counter economics will occur, not by individuals willingly breaking away from the government system to destroy it, but the individuals within it naturally progressing to the point where the government system is both completely unnecessary and unenforceable. This process cannot be rushed by violence, technological progress grows quickest in peaceful competition, it is in our own interest to maintain peace and prevent a catastrophic collapse of the system which will only halt the technological progress and will massively delay or even backpedal on this process which will inevitably make us free. This is a merger between agorist counter economics and what is described as crypto anarchy is how I see anarchy and freedom actually occurring. It will not and should not occur through violent means which will allow a vacuum of power to exist and then just be refilled by another violent state. The state must be withered away not torn down or else it will just rise again from the ashes. And this is why I have advocated voting for Joe Jorgensen in America. We must be as free as we possibly can be within the system instead of trying to just separate ourselves from it. The reason being is this quote from Pericles, an ancient Athenian statesman. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. No matter how much we hate the state, the state is here, it's not going anywhere anytime soon, we must use the methods available to be as free as we possibly can for the time being. True freedom will come eventually, but it cannot be rushed or else it will fall apart. It could be years, it could be decades, even centuries, but it is inevitable, it needs to happen and it will happen. Even if we don't live to see the zenith of this epoch, those who we leave behind will be able to enjoy it and they will sooner if we allow the process to unravel itself unobstructed. All we can do now is try to be as free and peaceful as we can and enjoy it to its fullest extent. So don't get your hopes wrapped up in a boo-glue or accelerating a societal collapse. Place your energy into optimism for the inevitably liberated future and into making yourself as free as you can possibly be for now. Take it easy.


I'd like to call the citizen's board a review for the city of Sheboygan into session. If we could stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance, please. I would like the members of the board to introduce themselves. Dave, would you start? David Inzi. Kenneth King, chair, and if we could have the city assessor introduce themselves, please. Excuse me, a little louder. Just a reminder that everybody should always use the mic for everything because we are on and so in order to do public meetings, we've got to speak into the mic so people can hear us. So anytime you say a word speak into a red-colored mic. Darcy Beardink. Ray Ann Schmidt. Michael Grotta, assessor. Chuck Adams, city attorney. Okay, those are all present, including the Meredith who is the clerk. We'd like to approve the minutes from the June 9th meeting available on the screen. I would entertain a motion for approval. So moved. Second. Motion and second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. What was the same sign? We have before us the two policies referenced. The first policy is a procedure for waiver of board of review hearing and request. Upon review, I would request the motion to approve. Second. Motion and second. Second. All right. All those in favor signify. Chairman? Yes. We discussed this at the last meeting and we ask that there's some revisions and I'm just asking the city attorney, were those added? Yes. So primarily substantive changes have to do with the idea that we're going to have different kinds of, it's not just telephone testimony that there are others and so including in your criteria, not only the ability to use those technologies but also a preference for virtual video testimony so that you can see documents so that you can see people so that that was added into actually both of those policies. So we are having actual phone videos? You may. It's always still your choice. We talked about swearing in of those people and is that still going to be included? Yes. You'll still be able to swear people in, all that, all the legal sort of technicalities are covered and that's part of the criteria as well. It's designed to be fairly flexible so that people can, if technology changes or people have specific needs, you can consider it but it is also designed to leave you with the primary decision as to whether the process that is in place is appropriate. So you can always say no. Very good. Thank you. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor as presented. The document is presented, signified by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. The second procedure that we need to look at and approve is the sworn telephone and sworn written testimony request. That procedure is outlined on page two of the documents provided to you today. After your review, I would entertain a motion for approval of that policy. Motion second? Second. Motion in second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. It passes. We request the qualifications of the assessor's office. Check, do these need to be read into the record or can we accept them as presented to the board? I almost broke my own rule. Yeah, you can simply accept them and then they would come in as an exhibit to the minutes. Thank you. Okay, let it be noted that we have received the qualifications of Darcy, Ray Ann, and Michael as required. I would entertain a motion to accept these qualifications as part of the record. All motion. And second? Motion and second to accept. They're accepted. I would now like to ask the assessor to review the assessment role. And give us an overview. First, I've got the assessor's affidavit that's signed and dated today. I'll present to the clerk. The assessment role presented today stands at a total valuation for locally assessed real estate at 2 billion, 412 million, 706,100. Looking at the summary of change, listing starting on the left-hand side, excuse me, bottom. The border review last year adjourned with a total valuation of 2 billion, 345,689,800 dollars. And then working right on this form shows the changes that were made during the assessment process in the last year. We had decreases due to revaluation or reconsideration of 8,363,500. We had property that went from accessible to exempt, totaling 2,081,200 dollars. We had property that was removed or destroyed at 458,900 dollars. We did have a small gain by annexation, 217,800 dollars. And then new construction, totaling 65,029,300 dollars. Property onto the assessment role from exempt, totaling 1,772,700. And then property increased due to or revaluation or reconsideration, 10,017,100 dollars. Reaching the total being presented today of 2 billion, 412,706,100 dollars. Just a brief summary of the border review or leading up to the border review, there was approximately a 70,379,000 dollar gain in assessed value for real and personal property. Projected ratio is at 88 percent. The general notices of assessment were mailed on May 4th. There was an additional mailing that took place for about a dozen properties that took place on June 30th. And as far as open book, there were 52 amended notices. Most of those were for a partial condominium project where there was reconsideration given after reviewing their exact costs. The assessor to affidavit has been signed and all required reports to the Department of Revenue have been sent in a timely fashion. I'm open if there's any questions. What was the annexation that took place? It looks like that was a residential property, approximately two acres with a house. And that was almost a total on that value? 217,800. Okay, excuse me. Just a residential building. It was. Thank you. Any other questions to the board, the assessor, and the assessment roll? If not, I would entertain a motion to accept the roll as presented. Motion second. Motion and second to approve the roll as presented. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Post same sign. Roll is accepted as presented. Are there any other any waivers? I believe the board has been requested to approve two waivers. And then we do have a filing for an objection to be heard. I'm going to ask this board and I'm not sure if now is the appropriate time that a waiver be requested for festival foods. Who is the third applicant that was filing for border review during? Okay, so the request is so we don't want you to take action on those waivers yet though. You need to make your motion first. That's the appropriate time? Yes. I would like to request for the all three of the properties that are would be seeking or would be requesting a waiver from border review. That the board of review would issue subpoena for requested records. And the reason for the subpoena is to get information that would only be attained through litigation and deep into the litigation. And I think that that is of benefit to the city, the border review, and to the assessor to get that information promptly. And we cannot do that after a waiver has been approved. The subpoena needs to be issued and complied with prior to that waiver being approved. And what I think the benefit is going to be to find out again information we wouldn't get until deep into litigation whether the property owner or their agent has sufficient information to overcome the presumption of correctness in the assessment. And if there is that presumption or detail lease information that isn't apparent now, that it's going to help the border review in the city in the long run. A question for the city attorney. There has not been an objection filed on this property, is that correct? So there, well there's been an objection filed on each of the three, right? To the best of my knowledge, yes. I believe there has been on each of the three. And so what's happening here is that there were two of the three that filed for waivers themselves and there's one of the three for which the assessor has filed for the waiver. But before acting on them he's made a motion and the state statute number is 70.47 sub eight sub D and it does indicate that the border review shall upon request of the assessor and he's made that request shall compel the attendance of witnesses accept objectors and then this is the important part and the production of all books, inventories, appraisals, documents and other data which may throw light on the value of the property. So in essence, when the assessor comes and makes that motion of you, you actually have no choice under the statute but to accept that motion. And so in essence what will happen is, as you know, I represent you today. I don't represent the assessor. The assessor has hired an attorney, Amy Seibel and she did inform me of the basis for the motion. Ms. Seibel will be preparing subpoenas that will go out of each of these three applicants have filed documents that allow them to just simply serve the subpoenas by mail but she's indicated that she needs five to six weeks to compel that information. That information then will be available to you when you hear the hearings or waive the hearings. Likely the hearings will simply be waived because of the requests and then they will, you know, they'll move on in the process but the assessor will have that information. As such, the proper motion by you would simply be to pursue it to 70.47 sub 8 sub d and pursuant to the request of the assessor to compel the production of all books, inventories, appraisals, documents and other data which may throw light upon the value of the property with regard to each of the three objections. Do I have such a motion? So moved. Motion second. Motion and second to approve the request per Wisconsin statute. Which? All those in favor? Yes. Which one is the one that we're requesting legal action on? It's actually all three. It's to get subpoena on each of the three objectors. Okay, we received a copy of the request for two. The third one is is the, it's known as shabuigan fast or festival foods. Is the third that the assessor is requesting, you know, potentially requesting a waiver. That motion has all those in favor signify by saying aye. All right. All right. Motion is passed. Any other waivers or requests? If not, ask the clerk for a schedule of today's objections. Okay, there are none. As a result, we need to go into recess. Yes. So what you'll need to do now is go into recess and come back two hours after you started the meeting. Okay, that will allow any other objections to be filed within a reasonable time as agreed to and published publicly as required by state statute. This time we will stand in recess and reconvene it at 10 o'clock. I'd like to reconvene the citizen border review of the city of shabuigan. Request the clerk, has there been any additional objections filed? No, there's not. Okay, having no additional objections. I would like to entertain a motion to adjourn to a future date to be determined based on the waivers we presently have under review. Motion second. Motion and second, we will stand adjourned until a future date to be determined as a result of the waivers. Having no other business, we will adjourn at this time.


Hey what's up everyone welcome to another video my name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at CTS and pro mountain bike racer and today I'm going to be going over my race from the Mohican 100 which is a 100 mile mountain bike race in Loudonville, Ohio. I'll be talking a little bit about my nutrition strategy and how I adjusted it on the fly when I couldn't follow it anymore. I'll be going over my bike setup for the race and at the end of the video I'll talk a little bit about my power data from the race so be sure to stick around for that. If you're new to this channel I make weekly training, racing, and gear related videos going over tips and tricks that I've learned in my 12 years of racing experience that have gotten me to the top of the ultra endurance mountain bike game in the US and as a cycling coach at CTS. If you want to learn how to get faster or just more about the science of training in general then be sure to subscribe and if you have a training question or a topic you'd like to see me cover in a future video then be sure to leave it in the comment section down below. I do my best to get to all the questions in the comments. The Mohican 100 is part of the national ultra endurance series which if you're unfamiliar with it features 100 mile and marathon distance races across the US. The Mohican 100 is the third stop for the series and is a staple of the series. The course starts in downtown Loudonville and quickly gets into singletrack and the Mohican wilderness and then it becomes a mix of technical singletrack, gravel roads, farm roads and horse trail. The terrain in this race varies quite a bit so it can be tough to choose the right bike for it. The last time I won this race was three years ago and I did it on a 27.5 hardtail with no dropper post and no arrow bars. My how things have changed. This year I used a full suspension 29er with a dropper post and arrow bars so obviously the bike was a little bit heavier but what I lost in pure climbing speed I made up for in speed in other parts of the course. I went with the Niner RKT9 RDO which is Niner's full suspension XC race bike. Although there isn't anything that gnarly about this race it does get quite bumpy towards the middle of the course and a full suspension allows you to stay seated and save a little bit of energy which is really important for a race of this length. The bike also handles better in the technical sections than a hardtail which is ultimately where I got away. This is also why I chose a dropper post for this race. Riding the downhills faster than my competitors meant they had to work harder to catch back up to me and eventually I'd slip away with enough time on a downhill that I decided to go solo. I also ran arrow bars for this course. Oh great here he goes again talking about his arrow bars. Where's Jeff Gabush at? I just made a whole video talking about using arrow bars for mountain and gravel races and I'll leave that in the description below. This race has a lot of road and gravel sections where you can use the arrow bars but one point on the course in particular is the infamous rail trail section. On the second half of the course there's about a 10 mile section of paved flat rail trail and I'd like to take a minute and see what kind of time savings you could see using arrow bars on this section. In wind tunnel testing riding in the arrow position has been shown to reduce aerodynamic drag on the order of 20%. If we want to see what this looks like in terms of time savings if we head over to bikecalculator.com and plug in my stats we can see that in a standard riding position this section would take about 31 and a half minutes and in the arrow position it would take about 26 minutes and 18 seconds. That's over five minutes in this one 10 mile section of the course and that's not taking into account all the other road and gravel sections where you can use arrow bars. Yeah but Dylan what about the integrity of the race? I mean if everyone runs arrow bars the next thing you know everybody's going to be running double disc wheels and frames that look like exotic tri bikes. Yeah let them do it if it's faster. Next thing you know people are going to be running e-bikes I mean it's basically the same thing. Nope that would be against the rules. Rounding out the bike build for this race I used the Fox 32 step cast fork Nox composite skyline wheels, a Maxis Aspen 2.2 tire in the front and Recon Race 2.2 in the rear, a SRAM Eagle X01 drivetrain with a 34 tooth chain ring and Crank Brothers egg beater pedals. Oh and how could I forget the Quark XX1 Eagle power meter giving me valuable power information throughout the race. A power meter is actually a great tool for 100 mile mountain bike racing because it allows you to pace yourself. The vast majority of people are going to go way too hard at the beginning of these races and a power meter tells you if you're doing that. There's the bike setup now let's get into the race. The race starts with an opening road section before you get into the first single track and my position into the first single track section wasn't great at about seven or eight riders back. This left me chasing through the first single track section and putting down a little bit more power than I would have liked. When I do these races my goal is to always try to average as little power as possible while still staying with the front group until I break away and then my goal is to average as high a power as possible. This race was no exception when we got onto the road section after the single track. We were in a small group and I sat in as much as possible and when I did pull through I kept my pole really short and easy. At about mile 50 we got into some technical single track and that's where me and the eventual third place finisher Jeff Pendleberry got away on one of the technical descents. The single track here was littered with wet mossy rocks so if you had good skills you could put in some time here. As you can see even we were struggling. Within the next couple miles I managed to shake Jeff as well and then I was on my own for the rest of the race. My focus now was to average a high power but keep it manageable, pick the best lines and stay on top of my nutrition which didn't exactly happen and almost turned disastrous and with that I'll go ahead and get into my nutrition strategy. My strategy for the race was fairly straightforward. I was going to consume a gel or shop blocks every 30 to 45 minutes and on my bike I would have two bottles with me one just water and one with a light drink mix. The light drink mix would have electrolytes and about 100 calories per bottle. At eight stations I usually down some coke really fast while my bottles are being filled and if you put all of that together then my caloric consumption for the race is a little over 300 calories per hour. One review article on fueling for ultra endurance athletes stated that energy intake should be between 36% and 54% of energy expenditure during the race. Given that this was a 5400 kilojoule day and the race lasted around 6.75 hours that's around 800 kilojoules an hour. 36% would be 288 calories per hour so it is above the low end of the range there. I also made sure that the gels I was consuming had caffeine because caffeine has been shown to boost performance up to a certain point so there's no need to overdo it. A study on caffeine consumption and cycling performance took nine well-trained cyclists and fed them 0, 5, 9, and 13 milligrams per kilogram body weight of caffeine before a cycling max test. All the caffeine tests performed better than the placebo however there was no difference in performance from the lowest caffeine dose all the way to the highest. Now I want to stress here that this is my own personal nutrition plan for this race and it won't necessarily work for everyone. Everyone has different calorie, sodium, and fluid needs during racing which makes giving recommendations for nutrition for racing hard. Although I just referenced a review that did give a recommended range, that range was fairly wide and other research isn't so clear. A study on marathon fueling techniques stated that regardless of what research demonstrates or how complex a formula may be each athlete must be treated as unique. Age, gender, total mass, lean mass, lactic threshold, VO2, O2 max, projected pace, projected acceleration, fatigue rate, temperature, humidity, sweat rate, gastric tolerance, and fuel product all affect fueling needs and unfortunately no clear universal formula exists to calculate such precise expenditure. The biggest thing here is to experiment before your big race and make sure that your nutrition plan works for you. So let's get back to my race where did it all go wrong? Well I didn't actually carry enough gels to last me the whole race as I planned on picking up gels at the aid stations as I went. As it turns out the last three aid stations didn't have any gels. This was a problem as this was my main fuel source. What the aid stations did have was coke. At the last three aid stations I made sure to chug down a cup of coke and take another one with me to go. It's a little bit nerve wracking not having fuel on your person during the end of these races but I made sure to fill up on coke at each aid station and what do you know it worked. By the very end of the race I did feel a bonk start to come on but I was so close to the finish at that point that it didn't matter. I was pretty relieved because the guy who got second place Christian Tangay has caught me before at the end of a hundred mile race when I've bonked and taken the win from me. All right let's get into some power numbers. My normalized power for this race was 262 watts which is pretty typical for a hundred mile mountain bike race for me. I often see between 260 and 265 at these races. Keep in mind that when you're mountain biking your power is going to be a little bit lower because there's so much time spent coasting. The power for this race was a lot steadier than normal though. It's not uncommon in these races to see a higher power than normal at the beginning of the race when you're trying to make the lead group and then lower power in the middle when you're trying to conserve and then high power again at the end when you're trying to break away. Making the lead group selection for this race did require higher power at 307 watts for the first 25 minutes and 292 watts for the first hour but that's not the highest I've seen. Remember that at this point in the race I'm just trying to keep my power as low as possible. 300 watts isn't sustainable for me for the whole race and clearly it wasn't for anyone else doing the race either. Everyone goes out too hard in these races and you have to be very conscious of what you're doing not to do the same. Speak for yourself bro. My legs feel so good right now. I'm just going to punch it as hard as I can until I blow up and probably by that point I'll be so far ahead that it won't matter. In the first single track section once I caught the leaders I would let them gain a little bit of time on me on the climb and then gain it right back in the next descent while putting out zero power. This allowed me to average a little bit lower power than them. Obviously I don't have access to my competitors power files but I would venture to guess that my power was a little bit lower than them in this first section. The rest of the race was pretty steady with a normalized power in the 250s and never really fading. That's the race recap for you guys. Big thanks to Ryan O'Dell for putting on another awesome Mohican 100. This is definitely a race worth checking out if you're into long mountain bike races. Also all the mid-race footage in this video was captured by Phil from MTV Shack who is another video creator here on YouTube. I've left the link for his channel in the description so be sure to head over to his channel and show him some love. This is win number two for me in the Anui series this year and I've got another one coming up this weekend the Lumberjack 100. Head over to Instagram and follow me at Dylan Johnson if you want to stay updated. Thanks for watching and if you like this video be sure to give it a like, share it with a friend, and subscribe for more. If you want to see more training and racing content be sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you want to follow my training be sure to check me out on Strava. And finally if you're looking for a coach shoot me an email at djohnson at trainright.com