Gravelleurs Raid 2016

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!