At 10,000 Feet, Even The Cows Can Hear You Wheeze

A couple of weeks back we hitched up the wagon and headed west to Fraser for the Kowtown Gravel in Kremmling Colorado. We knew it was going to be a challenge since us flat landers aren't used to the rarified air that they have in the mountains. The elevation at the start was around 7300 ft and would climb up to around 9300 feet, most of that coming in a 6.5 mile climb that gained a pretty substantial 1930 feet of elevation. That's not even something you can train for here is Nebraska so we headed out a little early to get the lungs and the legs as ready as we could for Kowtown.




Since going to the condo in Fraser now for the last couple of years, I've noticed that elevation is a weird thing. Riding at elevation doesn't seem to be all that challenging, the climbing yes but the elevation itself not as much, but stairs are to be avoided at all costs. Especially if you have to do multiple flights, by the time you get to the top the wheezing and racing heart make you feel like you're 90 years old.




If you can get up and over the mountain, the views on this race are worth the price of admission alone. Just when I thought it couldn't get any more beautiful something popped up on the horizon to prove me wrong.







Pretty good group of us from Nebraska headed out and we were joined by Jackie's sister who lives in the Denver metro area. Not having the legs or lungs to be of any serious contention in the overall standings we all decided to ride it as a group and just enjoy the views and the day together and I think that was the right choice.


The event is only in it's second year and I'd recommend it for sure if you haven't done it yet but there were some growing pains. Probably the biggest of which was that they ran out of things that they shouldn't have run out of. Breakfast burritos were available in the morning but you were supposed to RSVP for them so they could get a count, those were gone before the long course even took off so the math on that was way. They still had two more distances following that group that got nada on the burrito front which didn't sit well with several people. They also ran out of the free beer at the end which I also thought was a poor showing since they had to know how many people there were in the event and that started. Some of the group was also underwhelmed by what they had to offer at the SAG stops, I'm not much of a SAG stop connoisseur so I didn't really notice but the main complaint was lack of variety and lack of much that was on the salty side rather than the sweet side. The finish was a bit of a let down also. Maybe that's because we are used to mid-west gravel where the finish line is like a party and dozens of people line the chute cheering you on... and the cowbell... not a single one could be heard. Also unlike mid-west gravel there were no patches, stickers, medals or anything of the sort for finishing. Those items are more what we are used to here in the mid-west than an actual requirement but it didn't go unnoticed by several in our group. Like I said, second year so always room to improve even with events that have been around a lot longer than that. The views can't be beat, I really enjoyed it, put it on your list and get those climbing legs in shape. You'll need them.

*Note* 

I published the blog last night and thought about the critique of the event... are we becoming our own worst enemy? Number one complaint I hear lately about gravel events is the cost but isn't that because we've come to expect SAG stops and well stocked SAG stops, finisher patches, inflatable arches and all the fanfare? Sure gravel was free "back in the day" but in that day you were actually and factually self supported so there wasn't a cost to race directors. Have we, the 98% of the gravel field, let the roadie in us all get too whiny about the amenities we have come to expect at a gravel event? Maybe when asking why gravel is so expensive, the best person to ask is ourself. 

 

The More You Sweat In Peace, The Less You Bleed In War

The title of the blog is a quote from a speech that Stormin Norman Schwarzkopf gave to the graduating class of the Naval Academy in 1991. Being a young Marine at the time the speech was given, I heard that quote spoken and misspoken more times than I want to remember. Even though it was given by an Army General and contains War and bleeding in it, it's not just about violence... actually it's not about violence at all. It's about training and dedication to do what needs to be done when nobody is watching, the drive to do the difficult things when you don't want or need to do them. To understand that to achieve long term goals there is often some suffering in the present that needs to be done. The more you prepare for something, the easier it is to perform well when it's go time.


Being on or near the Summer Solstice it's almost a given that the Solstice Gravel Grinder is going to be on a hot day, this year that day seemed especially hot but I am sure I've said that just about every year. Sweat was a necessity rather than an option. Team 3 Cog Night signed up for the 100 mile co-ed single speed relay but at the last minute the other team had to drop out leaving us the only remaining single speed team. As long as we finished, we would be the single speed champions and we could have just coasted in on that and taken the victory given not really a victory earned.


As a team we all decided that instead of just cruising onto the podium. we would go out and give it our all and race as if we weren't the only single speed relay team. Like last year we were going to race against the geared teams and see how the cards played out. Jackie led us out and set the tone for the team with an impressive ride, covering the first 30 mile leg in just over 2 hours with a 14 mph pace.


I took the handoff in Burchard for the second leg of the relay and held up my end of the deal turning in a 14.3 average over the 40 mile leg for a time of 2 hours and 50 minutes.



Justin did the anchor leg and continued the fast pace with a time just over 2 hours for his 30 mile leg, also with a 14 mph pace.




Well, if you've been paying attention at all you know how the race ends... we won. However that's not the end of the story, 3 Cog Night turned in a great performance and we actually would have finished second out of all the relay teams if there were not a single speed relay team category and only by about 18 minutes. Looking at the overall standings for the Hundy, we placed 18th as a team out of 101 Hundy racers. I think we achieved our goal of giving it our best effort even if it wasn't necessary to take home the hardware and everyone on the team killed it in tough conditions. There were 31 DNFs in the Hundy, it was that hot out there. I hope that the single speed relay sticks, this is the first year for it and I feel like there will be other teams that will race it, seems more and more people are picking up a single speed lately.

Video from the Solstice.

 

Maybe The Horses Are Onto Something

Lazy is defined as someone lacking energy, showing a lack of effort or care... as I sit here writing this I am sitting in Colorado, sipping my morning coffee with a great view of Byers Peak without a care in the world. If that's lazy then sign me up!


Last weekend I spent on the saddle of my Stormchaser, surrounded by friends, pedaling 62 miles of gravel in a headwind. While the effort was definitely more substantial than it is right now, the amount of fucks given were no more or no less present then they are right now about most things in life outside of the ride. Instead I was just being present in that moment, sharing it with those that wanted to share their time with me. Is that Lazy also, if so sign me up, twice!




The Lazy Horse Gravel Grind out of Ohiowa, Nebraska is by far my favorite event of the gravel season. The sense of community, generosity and goodwill overflow the river of human decency during the 6 or so hours we spend winding our way through small, rural Nebraska towns and villages with odd names. Every single one of those towns, Alexandria, Bruning, Belvidere and Gilead are not only happy to see us but they might enjoy the event more than those who ride it do. The smiles on the faces of the church ladies who baked pies, the old men with stories to tell about "the good ole days of (insert town name here)" to anyone willing to listen, the overall feeling of being welcomed as part of their community is something you don't get with most gravel events. Lazy ain't so bad sometimes, hell if lazy had a physical embodiment it might be a small village on some dusty gravel road in the middle of Nebraska farm land. Provided you're not there during planting or harvest because ain't nobody got time for lazy then. 




Jackie, Justin, Julie and Jim (apparently only people with a J first name can be a part of this team) put on a fabulous event every year with courses that are equal parts fun and challenging but just enough challenge that they won't make you contemplate why you're out there doing it. In the ever increasing need by events to want to draw huge crowds, covet "big gravel names", find every hill and put on a spectacle of a show it's nice to see a contradictory event still flourish. Let's be honest with ourselves, most of us are closer to being a pro couch potato than we ever will be a pro cyclist... so why do we aspire to be that which we aren't instead of finding those events that embrace and celebrate what we are in the cycling world?




I'm not saying to forsake those big events, I myself have and still do participate in them, all I'm saying is give the little guys a look also, you might be surprised how much fun they really are. Jackie and I have started a trend to try to find and ride in the smaller, lesser known events that are within a few hours drive of where we live in an attempt to continue to embrace the true ethos of what gravel was all about when it trickled onto the scene, when very few people batted an eye at the small gathering of cyclists that for some reason rode the dirt instead of the nice, smooth pavement. I speak like I'm 100 years old and have been riding gravel for decades but truth be told I got into gravel not even 10 year ago in 2015. Even in that microcosm of time things have changed dramatically in the world of gravel. The other day I read a post on the social medias that went a little something like this "Gravel is dead, it's now just road racing on gravel roads." and well, maybe they aren't wrong.


Maybe I'm just the old curmudgeon yelling at the clouds in the sky and kids walking on my lawn, that is a distinct possibility but the joy that the small gravel events bring to my inner being is well worth the label. Find small gravel again, embrace events where event directors can still address the starting line by yelling, find rides that give more than they take. It's way easier to rope a lazy horse than it is a race horse.  

Check out the video from the event on the YouTube.

 

Mid (South) Life Crisis

Time flies, not only when you're having fun, but pretty much all the time anymore. It seems like when you're a little human, under the care of and dependent on larger humans, you do nothing but wish that time would go faster. You want to be older, cooler, out on your own taking on the big world and making your place in it. Those days seem to creep by so utterly slow that you sometimes think you'll never be an adult and get to do all the cool things your parents don't do, they are practically wasting their lives sitting around watching TV! Once you reach your adultness and start to get your independence, say the years from 18-28 or so, time goes by a little bit quicker. Almost imperceptible at this age you barely realize the grains of sand in the hourglass of life have started falling at a quicker rate. Then you get into your 30s and you start to notice that time IS going by a little quicker, life is full of routines and the days seem to be way shorter than you remembered them "when you were a kid". That incremental increase in the time/space continuum seems to double overnight and you realize your not 30 anymore but you're now looking at the other side of 40 as well, things ache that never ached, foods that used to be your friends now give you a gut ache or worse, HAIR IS GROWING EVERYWHERE! I feel like, for the most part, I live that life I imagined I'd have as a kid. I'm always on the go, I'm still in pretty good health and I ride my bicycle several times a week, that's the upside. The downside is that if you're not really, really careful your timeline on life seems to go right past ludicrous speed straight to Plaid. So it is now, as I sit here writing this, that I realize that the Mid South was almost two months ago and I am just now finding time to blog about it.


The Mid South has been going strong for 13 years now, and for 12 of those years I have not attended; unless you count the Incredibly Socially Distant version in 2020 but I think we'd all rather forget that year and move on. Part of the reason is because I didn't get into gravel really until about 2015 so any of them before then I was totally unaware of. Even after I became aware that the, then Land Run, existed it only appealed to me right up to the point where I saw pictures of the relentless orange mud and heard riders share their horror stories about bent bikes and bodies. I'm not much for riding in the mud and the N+1 factor back then was mostly just N so the thought of being out of a bike for weeks or longer waiting for repairs was enough to keep me away despite all the great things that seemed to surround the event. Despite all that the itch to see what it was all about was always right there in the back of my mind.



They weren't all bad years though as there were several years where the pictures of broken bikes were replaced with pictures of riders, bikes and everything else covered in orange dust better suited to Mars than the 3rd rock from the sun. The switch recently to riding single speed almost exclusively at events (on the bike designed specifically for the conditions at the Mud South) eliminating the worry about bent or broken derailleurs, a little FOMO and a lot of Jackie making up her mind that WE were going to do it this year led to us finding ourselves lined up on the morning of March 16th. Listening to Bobby Wintle on the mic and the sounds of King Cabbage while waiting for the gun to go off for the shorter distance of the Mid South, we knew this wasn't just some run of the mill gravel event. People flock to the Mid South despite the cold weather, despite the rain, despite the bike and body destroying orange mud that often shows up uninvited, not because they are masochists but because of what the Mid South has built down there in Stillwater. It's something that is difficult to explain, you just have to experience it yourself to understand. If this race is not on your to do list of gravel events, it really should be.






From the time your front wheel rolled across the timing mats to the hug at the end, there was never a time that you weren't surrounded by dozens of other riders. That was something we noticed early on, most races have that initial sprint of the rabbits, then the hounds who want to be rabbits who go out way too fast chasing them and then the rest of the field that just sort of settles into their own pace. In general that often equates to miles of lonely or near solitary miles but that was never the case here. The shorter route, I had heard, had 1000 riders in it. If you're not one who likes to grind out the miles in your own head, this might be the race for you as there will always be someone in earshot to talk to it seemed.






Doug, Jackie and I did a modified quick "party pace" through the day as planned when we signed up. Bikes are fun, bikes with friends is funner and I am glad we got to share that time together. Rick caught up to us not too many miles from the end and our group of three became a group of four.





The "Bobby Hug" at the end really is that good, I think it's part joy of being done pedaling, part sense of accomplishment but mostly it's good because if feels sincere, it feels like an old friend giving you a hug after a long absences... it feels like, well, family.



While only my first time at the Mid South, I have to admit it was my second "Bobby Hug", I managed to sneak on in at the finish line of Gravel Worlds in 2022 when I shared a champagne dousing of the Women's 150 mile winner that year with Bobby. That may have help to tip the scales in favor of finally making it to the Mid South, If I'm being honest.


I love the little gravel family that we have built, the times we've shared on and off the bike and the memories that will last well after our abilities to do these kinds of things fade into just memories. We could not have asked for better weather for Mid South and really lucked out with not just a dry year but temps were mild being in the 70s, winds were single digits all day and the slight overcast kept the need for sunscreen to a minimum. Top ten day in gravel and top ten event that I can now check off of my bucket list of gravel events that have to be attempted at least once.



Check out the Mid South video on YouTube!