Gravel Worlds

Gravel Worlds 2016 was to be a 146 mile gravel road race circumnavigating the city of Lincoln, Nebraska. Marc had originally approached me with the idea of doing this epic race about six months prior. I did a little research and watched a video on YouTube to see what I was in for. The 2015 race had over 11,000 feet of climbing and the temperatures were in the 90’s and beyond. Racers fell like dominoes, and less than half of them finished. Rebecca Rusch, the pro cyclist who won the women’s title, commented in the video that she didn’t anticipate how deep she would have to dig.

Marc, however, promised that he would stay with me and wouldn’t abandon me in the plains of Nebraska. He said “All you have to do is ride your bike!” and “We have all day to do it.” With those promises in mind, I said OK. I figured the worst that could happen is I would opt out halfway through because of the blazing heat and get a ride back to the hotel.

It turned out that Marc broke his femur at his hip two weeks prior to the race, and ended up needing surgery. I was very sad for Marc, and also disappointed that we would have to cancel our trip to Nebraska. I had been training all summer, and I had even done some hill repeats in the heat and humidity to prepare. Marc, however, insisted that his being laid up did not mean that I would have to miss the race. He transferred his entry to our friend James, and he insisted that I go with James and our friend Jeff. He said that Jeff would ride with me. Marc was very sick the week after surgery, and I didn’t think I should leave him. However, he kept insisting that I go. I went back and forth the week before the race, deciding I should go for Marc, then deciding I should stay to take care of him. Marc was determined that I go, and I think he intentionally pushed himself to be more mobile on his crutches in order to assure me that it was OK to leave him. In the end, Marc won. August 19th arrived, and I packed my bags and bike and headed to Jeff’s house at 5:00 am to begin the journey.

The ride to Nebraska was a long one. I kept jokingly asking the guys “Are we there yet?” from the backseat of Jeff’s truck. I was extremely nervous about doing my first race without Marc, and I tried to pass the time by taking pictures out of the truck window. I snapped a picture of the “World’s Largest Truckstop” on I 80 (someday I have got to go inside that place), and a picture as we crossed into Nebraska.

We arrived in Lincoln about 4:00 pm and immediately went to the bike shop where we were to pick up our race packets. We got a swag bag with our racing numbers, a water bottle, a glass, and some gels. By the time we got to the hotel, checked in, and ate, it was time to go to bed. We would need to get up at 4:00 am the next morning to eat breakfast and get our gear packed, drive to the race start, and be ready to race at 6:00 am.

The next morning we woke up at 4:00 am and got coffee and an awesome hotel breakfast that included waffles and fried potatoes. However, I always find it extremely difficult to choke down food that early in the morning, and I struggled to eat. We then packed and headed to the race start across town. The ride there was extremely frustrating. The hotel parking garage had such tight corners that Jeff could barely maneuver his truck without scraping the walls. Our GPS then tried to take us down one-way streets downtown, and we had to re-route a few times to get out to the highway. When we finally spotted the race start in the distance, we had no idea where to park. We parked on the street only to be told by someone that it was just a drop-off area. We were then directed to a middle school where we could park, but the person directing us just pointed “over there” and couldn’t give clear directions. When we finally found a parking spot, I had to use the bathroom. There were none. I opted to go behind the middle school in a corner where no one could see me. As I headed back to the truck I realized I had forgotten my riding glasses, and for a brief moment I panicked. Gravel dust can be killer on the eyes, especially if it gets under my contact lenses. I told Jeff I had forgotten them and said “What am I going to do?!”. Jeff checked his console and found some clear glasses that I could borrow. I hoped it wouldn’t get too sunny, because I had intended to wear transition lenses that would darken as the sun came up.

By the time we got our bikes off the back of the truck and I put on my borrowed glasses, it was time to get to the race start. It was still dark for about another hour, and the racers were a sea of headlamps and tail lights. It was also very chilly, in the 50’s, and I didn’t have on a jacket because I knew by the time the sun came up I wouldn’t need it, and I would have to stop and store it. The only warm up was the trip from the car to the race start, which was just a few blocks.

Almost as soon as we got there, the race began. The race was to have a neutral start for a few miles until we got out of town and hit the gravel. There were over 400 riders packed tight, and there was lots of slowing as we hit several traffic circles. I remember thinking that the start is the most dangerous part of a race. There are so many riders packed in a small space, and they’re all trying to maneuver for a better position. If a rider goes down, many more will follow. As we turned off of the pavement, I noticed the gravel was actually wet sand. It had rained all day the day before, and the road was a mess. My tires were slipping and sliding, and I told Jeff I thought I had the wrong tires. Jeff told me that my tires were fine, and that the road would soon dry out as the sun came up in an hour or so. He said he thought the roads would become more hard packed as the day went on.

The first hour crawled by slowly. I have terrible night vision as I have no depth perception in the dark, and because I wear contacts, the glare of tail lights makes it even more difficult to see. I was slipping and sliding climbing hill after hill, and I had difficulty seeing the road in front of me. Climbing for the first hour in the sand took a tremendous amount of energy, and I found myself praying for the sun to come up.

The sun came up at about 7:00 am, and the sky turned a beautiful pink. However, there was a lot of cloud cover and I worried that the roads wouldn’t dry out as quickly as I had hoped. It was also still very chilly. By the time we passed a man with a video camera at mile 17, the roads were improving. They were still sandy, but there were some hard packed areas. I saw Jeff raise his hand as he passed the camera man. A friend found the video link on-line, and I took a screen shot of Jeff giving the peace sign with me behind him.

Most races with a lot of elevation will have some breaks where there will be flat roads for a few miles. I kept wondering when the break would come. When we got to the mandatory checkpoint at about mile 37, we had been climbing for 3 hours. I told Jeff I was impressed that our speed was 13 mph with all the climbing we had done in the sand. He told me that it was going to change soon because we were about to hit a fierce headwind that would last for 20 miles. By the time we reached the next mandatory checkpoint at mile 75, I was exhausted. The climbing hadn’t stopped, and now we had wind to contend with. At least the roads were more hard packed.

The checkpoint was at someone’s farm, and there was a garden hose running into a crock for racers to fill their water bottles. I looked into the crock and saw what I thought was dirt, but a woman there said it was just rust from the hose. Jeff told me to drink up because the minerals were good for me! I then asked a man where the bathroom was and he pointed to what I thought was an outhouse. He said “There’s a primitive one there”. I said “An outhouse? That’s fine.” He then said “No, there’s bushes behind the barn.” I was afraid there would be dozens of male riders there, so I opted to go behind another building that was behind the barn. I looked for something to eat and saw a jar of pickles and I can’t remember what else sitting on a wooden platform that smelled like animals. It wasn’t appetizing, and I was very surprised that the checkpoints didn’t have bananas or granola bars like most races will have. I had taken little food with me, thinking that the three mandatory checkpoints would give me anything extra that I needed. I told Jeff I only had a few gels left and he gave me a couple of his gels. We were off again after just a few minutes. By this time I was really psyched.  I thought I was riding very poorly, but I saw dozens of riders pull into the checkpoint after us, and we ran into Ken, a very strong rider that we knew.  I was impressed that I was keeping up with him.

The next 33 miles were very rough. I could tell Jeff was getting frustrated by my pace, so I gave him the blessing to ride on ahead. I regretted this decision pretty quickly. I soon found myself completely alone against the fierce headwind, and my Garmin kept flashing “off course”. It would show the course for a while, then go blank. Luckily, I could see some riders way in the distance, so I knew I was OK. At one point, however, I lost sight of any riders in any direction, and I got seriously concerned that I had taken a wrong turn. I flagged down a passing pickup truck and asked the man where I was. I pulled out the cue sheet I had printed and asked him if I was on 112th street. He said that I had just passed it, so I had gone straight instead of turning right. I thanked him and turned back to get back on course.

The rest of the race I had to keep pulling out my cue sheet and checking where I was to make sure I didn’t miss a turn. It was very lonely, being in the middle of nowhere with nothing but dirt, gravel, and scrubby looking land for miles and miles. The hills also never stopped coming. The entire race was a climb uphill, a brief downhill, then another climb, then another. The hills made it impossible for me to draft and stay on someone else’s wheel.  As I approached the town of Valparaiso at mile 108 I started to get a terrible cramp in my left thigh. I couldn’t believe it. I only had 38 miles to go! I knew if I didn’t take care of it quickly, I would not be able to do hills for another 38 miles. I tried only applying pressure to my right leg and just letting the left leg spin, but I had terrible shooting pain whenever I moved. I decided to just pedal and deal with the pain until I could get to a convenience store that I knew was about 1/2 mile ahead, according to the cue sheet. When I pulled up into the convenience store parking lot, I saw that other riders had stopped, and there was Jeff waiting for me. I told him about the cramps, and he took out a packet of Skratchlabs hyper hydration mix and told me to chug it. I drank almost an entire bottle with the mix and rubbed my thigh. I then ate some corn chips for the salt. I laid down on the ground, looking up at the sky, and I told Jeff to give me a minute. Jeff is the king of taking unflattering pictures, and I figured he would take one of me on the ground.  I was hurting and I didn’t care.  I said “Go ahead, take my picture!”

Within a few minutes we were on our way. The cramps in my thigh had stopped, and I still had one bottle of Skratchlabs left. I thought I could make it if the cramps didn’t return. When we were about 25 miles away from the finish I told Jeff to go for it and finish as fast as he could. I knew there was one more mandatory checkpoint where I could get help if I needed it.

The last checkpoint was in a large pole barn on someone’s farm. This was at mile 123. The hosts of this checkpoint were extremely gracious. They had bananas, oranges, granola bars, different kinds of chips, peanut butter and jelly, and tacos. There were a lot of racers who were lingering here. I asked to use the bathroom and got directed to a real bathroom. I wanted to sit down and stay awhile so badly, but I knew I had to keep moving. I ate a banana and half a peanut butter sandwich, and stuffed a granola bar in my feedbag. As I got back on my bike I looked up their driveway, which was chunky gravel and slightly uphill, and I really wanted to walk my bike up the driveway! I laughed as I saw two people on a tandem leave their tandem at the top of the driveway. They apparently felt the same way.

Shortly after I left the farm, I turned onto a seasonal road. The road was muddy and filled with ruts, and I had to ride around a barricaded bridge. I tried riding through the mud and almost fell off the bike clipped in.  This road really was unnecessary cruel being so close to the end.

The next 23 miles I rode off and on with a half a dozen other riders. Our friend Ken, who had been the one to talk Marc into signing us up for the race, passed me at mile 135. I yelled at him and asked him what he had gotten me into, and he laughed and said “Honestly, I didn’t know it would be this bad!” He rode past me and I didn’t have the energy to pursue him. It literally took every thing I had to just keep moving myself forward up a hill, then another, then another, then another. I watched my Garmin as it showed that I was 4.6 miles from the finish line, then 3.2, then 2.8, and so on. Every tenth of a mile seemed like an eternity! Normally I get energized at the end of a race and sprint across the finish, but I just didn’t have the strength to pull that off. With about 1.5 miles to go the man riding in front of me had a blow out.  He said he was just going to ride on the flat because he was too close to mess with it.  I finally turned onto pavement with 1.2 miles to go. The pavement was slightly uphill, so I still had no energy to sprint. Finally, I could see the line in sight and I stood up to get more power to look like I wasn’t limping across the finish line. As I passed the line I heard James and Jeff cheering, and a man yelled at me to come get my finisher’s patch.

There were 442 people registered for the race, and the results said that 263 finished. I finished 196th overall and 11th in the Master’s Women division. This was definitely a race where anyone who finished, even dead last, could feel a great sense of accomplishment. There were people coming across the finish line as late as 10:40 at night, and I had finished before the sun set. James had ridden like a maniac and had finished in less than 10 hours, and Jeff had finished about 1/2 hour before me. We all agreed that we didn’t feel the need to take this one on again!