Well, we lived through 2020 and somehow made it to 2021, and the race season has begun. Despite the Covid pandemic raging on in Michigan with an infection rate higher than all of the other states, the promoters of the races that are a part of the Michigan Gravel Race Series have had a year to figure out how to comply with Michigan’s Health Department standards and still have their races continue.
Waterloo Grit and Gravel was the second race of the Michigan Gravel Race Series 2021 season, and was to be held at the Waterloo State Recreation Area in Chelsea, Michigan. The Waterloo Recreation Area is the largest park in the Lower Peninsula. It has fishing lakes, picnic areas, mountain biking trails, equestrian trails, swimming beaches, and hiking trails. It’s an absolutely beautiful area with rolling gravel hills that pass through breathtaking forests. It’s one of my favorite races. Last year when Marc and I were riding the course, we passed through a meadow with literally a sea of yellow butterflies fluttering across the road. Below is a picture I took while warming up before the race on April 17th. Spring has not yet arrived in Michigan, so the canopy of trees covering the roads is still sparse.
The race was to begin at 9:00 am, which is 8:00 am Indiana time. This meant that Marc and I would have to get up at 3:00 am in order to be on the road by 4:00 am. This is the hardest part of racing, and the part which Marc hates the most. He struggles with the lack of sleep and the driving in the dark. It also makes it extremely difficult when we’ve had a three hour car ride and we get to the race with little or no time to warm up. This race would be no exception. The fog and dark on the Interstate made for a difficult drive, and we got to the recreation area about an hour before the race was to begin. However, we had to get our race packet and prepare our bikes, which meant we might have 15 minutes to ride before we had to line up at the start.
When we got to the park we had to pay $9 for a day park pass, and we were directed to a parking lot. Once in the park, we were told we had to wear masks. I asked the man who parked next to us where our packets were, and he pointed to the end of the parking lot where there was a hill that led to another parking lot. I got on my bike and rode to where he pointed, and there was a woman there who scanned my race admission ticket on my phone and pointed to a long row of metal bike racks with numbers on them. We were to look for our race numbers. Our bag with our race plates and other goodies, such as a water bottle and some gels, was below our number. It was really a brilliant system, because we were able to get our stuff and not have any contact with anyone. A picture of the bike racks is below. Usually races have tables set up where everyone lines up to get their packets. However, with Covid regulations, they had to minimize anyone having contact with others as much as possible.
I had about ten or fifteen minutes to ride around before the race, however, Marc was busy getting his bike ready and he immediately rode over to the start to line up. I was out riding and rode right past him when 9:00 approached, thinking the fat bikes were in the second wave. Marc flagged me down and scolded me for not getting up front with the fast guys for the race start. All the fat bikes, tandems, and single speeds were to start in the first wave at 9:00. We were to stay six feet away from each other, so I was stuck and couldn’t move up to the front of the wave. We were also to wear our masks for the first mile of the race, however, I noticed that while everyone was respecting each other’s space, hardly anyone was wearing a mask. The start of the race, pictured below, is in a parking lot and proceeds out of the park onto pavement for a few hundred feet before turning onto a gravel road.
As soon as the race began, I immediately began trying to pass people to make it to the front of the pack. Marc was right behind me. We turned left at the park entrance onto a paved road, and rode a short distance to where we were to turn right from the paved road onto gravel. At the corner, I saw a man on a gravel bike who had crashed. There were orange cones at the corner marking the turn, directing racers to the outside of the cones. It looked like he had gone to the inside of the cones and had wiped out on the gravel that was spattered on the pavement, which the cones has apparently been protecting us from. He got up and got back up on his bike, so it appeared he was OK. I always hate seeing crashes right at the race start. With so may riders packed together, race starts are the sometimes the most dangerous part of the race. That’s why I usually stay to the left to avoid and try to pass others.
This race has about 1,000 feet of elevation gain in the first nine miles. So I knew right away we would be climbing hills, and I wouldn’t be warmed up. It typically takes me at least a half an hour to get my heart rate up, so I knew that I would be gasping for air up those hills. Marc has planned to stay with me during the race as he didn’t want to compete. He immediately began yelling at me to stay on a wheel. I call him Coach Marc the whip cracker, because he is a pretty ruthless coach. He constantly yells, and he tells me he’s doing it for my own good. It’s so funny, because we have this conversation all the time. I tell him to be nice and encourage me, and he says it’s not a coach’s job to be nice, and I need to toughen up. It makes me laugh because he is right. Well, Marc was not being nice today. Every time a fast wheel would pass us and I couldn’t stay on it, he would get upset. At one point he told me “you’re so close to being an 18 mph rider if you could just stay on a wheel!” Then I snapped back, “I’m a girl on a fat bike chasing guys on skinny tires. What do you want from me?! Be nicer!” I also told him to just leave me and I would be fine, because I’d won plenty of race without him.
I can’t remember how many miles we were into the 30 mile course when I saw a photographer at the top of a very steep hill. That was all the motivation I needed. No way was I going to get my picture taken being the last one up a hill. So I stood up and passed all the guys who were riding up that hill, including Marc.
Shortly after the hill, we turned onto a sandy road that runs past the Cassidy Lake Special Alternative Incarceration Facility. This is a prison that used to be a minimum security boot camp. It is surrounded by high fences and barbed wire, and the road that runs past it is poorly maintained (maybe to discourage prisoners from escaping?!) and it can sometimes be in very bad condition. A few years ago during a winter race, there were deep ruts in the road that made it extremely difficult to maneuver. Today it was loose sand with a few pot holes. We settled into riding behind a heavier rider doing about 17 mph. Every time a faster rider would ride by, Marc would motion for me to follow but I just couldn’t. I was barely hanging on to the fat guy with my 3.8″ tires on sand.
After the prison road, the course turned onto some very smooth, rolling pavement. This would continue for miles until the sprint finish. It was discouraging that we had a headwind for the last few miles. There was a girl ahead on a mountain bike and Marc said “there’s a girl up there!” I tried sprinting several times to try and catch her, but every time I would get close there would be another hill and she would slip past me. As we turned right into the park towards the finish, I saw my break as she hesitated with the line of cones. I pulled ahead of her, thinking I had crossed the finish line, but the finish line wasn’t there. It was very confusing and I yelled at a guy in the road “where’s the finish line?” He pointed to the right, where there were more cones, and I could see the arched finish line with the finish time in big red letters. The time said 1:53. As I crossed the finish line and heard my name being mentioned over the loud speaker, I immediately looked around the parking lot to see if any other girls on fat bikes had finished ahead of me. I didn’t see any. In fact, I hadn’t seen any girls on fat bikes the entire race, so I had no idea if they were ahead of me or behind me. I pulled out my phone and checked the race website, and saw that I had finished first. There were no other finishers yet. Since there was to be no awards ceremony due to the Covid restrictions, Marc and I went back to the car. After we changed, I asked Marc to take a victory photo of me in front of the backdrop they had set up for that purpose.
As it turned out, I beat the 2nd place fat bike female by almost 55 minutes! I laughed because Marc had pushed me so hard and I could have easily won the race just going for a leisure ride. My average speed was 16.4 mph and the 2nd place finisher averaged 11.1 mph. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th finishers were within less than five minutes of each other. 5th place had some mechanical issues and didn’t finish. I finished 12th overall out of 23 (men and women combined). I beat 8 men!
Two days after the race, I went to Terre Haute for my mom’s 83rd birthday. When I proudly showed my mom my race pictures beating the boys up the hill, she looked at the picture, then was silent. After some hesitation she said “Lou, that doesn’t look like you.” I laughed because Mom did not think it was a flattering photo. I told her that I didn’t want to look pretty, I just wanted to look tough!