Last Saturday I participated in the second annual Gravelleurs
Raid, which is a gravel race in Lawrence, KS. I had initially planned on going
to the Tour of Hermann Gravel Challenge as I did last year, but schedules did
not allow for that this year. My wife had an event we had to attend on Friday
night, so getting to Hermann in time for a Saturday morning start was not
realistic. I preferred the Hermann event since it was a two-day event totaling
200 miles, so I just had to do a solo 100 on Sunday to mimic that setup. That
is not to say Gravelleurs Raid was a bad event. It was well-organized and
seemed like a big success.
The race itself was quite interesting. The start was
blistering fast. I have enough of these events under my belt now to know this
is going to happen, but somehow it still took me by surprise. I stuck with the
front group for the first few miles in the flat river bottoms, and soon after
we started climbing hills a group of three took off the front. This included
Steve Tilford and Brian Jensen - two former pros who are still crazy fast. The
second group I was in stayed pretty close to them until about mile 15, which is
when they pretty much disappeared ahead of us. Part of me wanted to try to
stick with them, but I thought better of it. That may have been a wise choice
considering I heard Tilford averaged 290 watts for the entire event. No wonder
he used to be a pro and holds several national and world championships!
The second group consisted of 7 or so guys who weren’t going
the pro pace set by the leading group, but also weren’t slacking off. We sort
of worked together for a good while, and we were keeping a pretty good pace that
I was comfortable enough with. At about mile 35, a guy near the front of the
group said something to some of the other group members, and they said
something back and sat up. The guy who first talked then stopped and took a “natural
break”. I needed one myself, so I also pulled off and did the same. My
assumption (which was confirmed later by one of the riders in the group) was
that we were taking a brief neutral period for this break. However, someone who
I will not name apparently said “let’s keep pushing the pace” to the rest of
the group, and off they went. When I got back on my bike I noticed that they
were lined back up and not taking it easy, and it didn’t take long to realize they
had changed their minds about the neutral period. Thus, what I interpret as a
less than gentlemanly or outright unsportsmanlike act meant I was solo after
that. I considered hammering to try to catch back on, but my frustration with
the group really zapped my motivation. So I just tried to keep it steady on my
own. The other guy who took a break eventually caught up, and I probably should
have tried working with him to catch back up. I didn’t since I thought keeping
a steady pace would eventually do me favors, but I underestimated the power of
having a group to ride with and conserve energy and ended up riding solo the
remaining 65 miles.
I want to revisit what I called an unsportsmanlike act
above. I must admit that in no way did anyone break any rules or do anything
that should get them in trouble. They didn’t have to wait, and they didn’t. Perhaps
I should have confirmed there was going to be a neutral period before I pulled
over. Either way, the group knew what was going on and decided to drop two
people who were briefly off their bikes. This is a pretty classless act in my
opinion, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore. On the
bright side, this is just bike racing and I still got to enjoy the day while
pedaling over some gravel, so all in all a good day. The result wasn’t what I
was hoping for, but I learned a lesson or two. First, confirm other people are willing to relax before taking a natural break. Second, maybe fight to catch the group in situations where I'm off the back, but that is certainly a case by case issue. Lastly, being high up in the overall results at an event like Dirty Kanza may be much more difficult than originally thought. Those pros and former pros can really crush it!
