2013 Gravel World Championships

I raced the Gravel World Championships yesterday on my SS in Lincoln, NE.  It was 150 miles that included almost 8,000 feet of climbing and took 10 hours and 51 minutes for me to complete.  I was actually riding for less than 10 hours, but there was a break worked in that I'll explain later in the post.  It was put on by the Pirate Cycling League, which is an organization that I think works on donations only.  The race didn't even have an entry fee, but they did an awesome job that would rival races with high entry fees.  Hopefully that means the donations are flowing because they are fantastic.

The race started in the dark at 6:00 AM and spread out quickly.  A lot of the people riding gears took off fast, but I had decided beforehand that I wanted to try to go with a more measured approach to avoid cracking later in the race.  At mile 11 I was in a line of riders going down a hill and the second guy ahead of me lost control and crashed hard.  I was pretty sure I was going down with him when it first happened, but somehow the guy right in front of me steered around him and I was able to steer even wider around that guy. I was very lucky, but the guy that went down wasn't.  I heard he dislocated his shoulder, but at least he was in good spirits hanging around the event when I was finished later in the day.

I rode with a group for the first 35 miles or so until the first of three checkpoints.  I refueled and bought a Nebraska lottery ticket, which is a requirement to provide proof that you went to the checkpoints since they get stamped with the appropriate information.  Part of the deal is that everyone has to give their lottery tickets to the PCL when they are done, so hopefully they win big!  When I left my original group was broken up, but I somehow ended up with 3 other singlespeed riders and rode with them for a while.  We got separated when I was on the back and the group missed a turn that I knew we had to make since my Garmin was guiding me. I stopped and yelled at them and rode on when they turned around.  My original intention was to ride pretty easy until they caught up, but they never did.  As a result, I was riding alone passing geared riders here and there.  I decided to hit it pretty hard when one of them told me a guy on a fixed gear was up ahead.  So from about mile 45 until mile 115 I was all alone and hitting it pretty hard since I had aspirations of winning the SS category.

I caught the fixed gear rider around mile 75 and I could tell he was in some pain, so I passed him while riding an intense pace to hopefully deter him from trying to keep up.  It seemed to have worked pretty well and at the second checkpoint at around mile 85 I was informed that I was the first SS rider to come through.  Knowing I was leading made me continue pushing hard, but all this intensity and solo riding started to catch up to me at around 100 miles in to the race.  This was around the most hilly section of the entire race and the heat was starting to pick up a lot.  This is also where the race turned south into a strong headwind.  I quickly faded and was in a bad place with how I felt.

I limped in to the third checkpoint at mile 115 and thought I might have to pull the plug.  I had the typical overheating symptoms (chills, eating/drinking made me feel sick, etc), so I went inside the convenience store and sat in the air conditioning for at least half an hour.  This is where the discrepancy between my time for the event and actual riding time occurred.  John Mathias, a former master's category gravel world champion that I've done some gravel riding with lately, rolled in and talked me in to continuing the race.  It didn't hurt that the fixed gear rider I had passed earlier also rolled in around that time.  Those two things combined made me decide that I needed to at least try to finish.  Had I not been leading the SS category I would have called for someone to come pick me up, but giving up while leading just didn't make any sense to me.

The next 35 miles were brutal.  My average speed would probably be embarrassing to see for that section, but I wasn't losing any more spots so I figured everyone was in some pain.  I hated myself to do it, but I actually had to walk a couple of the bigger hills in the last 10 miles.  My legs just wouldn't cooperate, and the effort required for even small hills made me feel like I was going to pass out.  My 42x16 gearing, while fantastic on flat stretches where I can push the pace, definitely did me no favors with those climbs.  There was a surprise checkpoint with 10 miles to go to keep everyone honest, and someone there told me that two other SS riders had already been through.  While I knew this would be impossible since I hadn't been passed by anyone on geared or SS since I was told I was in first at mile 115, my cooked brain accepted it as true and I just wanted to finish.

I finally rolled in nearly 11 hours after starting and Corey, one of the organizers with the PCL, immediately shook my hand and congratulated me for being the SS gravel world champion.  It turns out the people at the surprise checkpoint were ill informed and I was still leading.  I was passed in that last 10 miles by a very fast female racer whose name I do not know and Britton Kusiak and his wife on their tandem, but other than that it was just me watching my Garmin slowly tick down the miles.  There were a lot of strong riders that either pulled out of the race or finished in well over 12 hours, so the difficulty of the course, the weather, etc should not be overlooked.  The official results indicated that 112 finished out of 203 riders, so with just over 50% finishing I think that is a pretty good indicator of how difficult the race was.  Results are here:

http://gravelworlds.com/wpgw/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Finish-Roster.pdf

It turns out I didn't follow my strategy of pacing myself very well, but it all worked out in the end.  For future gravel events, such as the Dirty Kanza or future renditions of this event, I'll have to do better at not burning through my energy too early so I can be more consistent throughout.  I'm lucky it worked out yesterday and I'm now a gravel world champion.  With my struggles and relatively slow overall pace I almost feel like the win isn't deserved, but then again maybe working through those struggles is what these long events are all about.  

Me in my world champion jersey.  Thanks to David Neidinger for the photo.