C.O.G 100 - 66 Miles Of Mud And Wind

If you have never heard the song Truck Got Stuck by Corb Lund, go there now and give it a listen, no really, go now, give it a listen and come back. I'll wait and it'll put you in the right mind set for the rest of this post.

Now that you have that little ear worm wiggling around inside the memory banks, we can begin in earnest. The week leading up to the inaugural C.O.G 100 didn't look terrible from a weather standpoint, it didn't look fantastic either but after the biblical flooding in Nebraska during the month it was maybe the best case scenario. Just days prior to the race the forecast had mostly eliminated the chances of rain that was lingering around on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; that didn't mean that things would be dry and fast but it maybe meant things would be ridable.


Then on Friday, Mother Nature pulled a hold my beer and watch this on us and decided to skip the planned forecast and rain anyway, just for good measure she also threw in some sleet and freezing rain for a brief time too.


I left work early on Friday, well normal time for my Friday as we get off at noon, and drove through steady rain all the way to the hotel in Grinnell and checked in. Any illusions I might have had about the course being in decent shape were running down the drain with the rest of the liquid sunshine, dry-ish was no longer a possibility.




By the time I finished checking in and unloading the car and drying the rain soaked bike it was about 5 pm but still hours before the next of our crew would arrive in Grinnell. Since I was starting to get hungry and I didn't have a whole lot of other things to do, I decided it was close enough to pre-race registration time that I might as well head down to Peace Tree's taproom and try the local food and beverage. The taproom was pretty barren when I got there so finding a table was not an issue, beer was good and the food from Prairie Canary across the street was fantastic. So good as a matter of fact that both places were on repeat the following night after the race as well.



Right around 6 pm, GT and Dave showed up with the waivers and other registration incidentals, including the pre-ordered C.O.G jersey that I had purchased earlier and a rad C.O.G 100 hat that all entrants who showed up for the race received. Not a bad haul, not bad at all.


Since I had shown up with plenty of time to spare before the others would arrive I headed back to the hotel to prep the bike and shower up before heading back down to the taproom again to meet up with the rest of the gang just getting into town.


The return trip to Peace Tree was still a soggy event, it looked like things were maybe coming to an end as far as precipitation went but the damage had already been done to the gravel and there was no drying out happening that night. Grinnell has a pretty quaint downtown area, a few restaurants, a taproom and a movie theater all within a few steps of each other; what else could a person need. We ate, we drank and then decided to head back to the hotel for last minute prep and some much needed sleep.


If you're ever in the Grinnell area and looking for a place to lay your head, I highly recommend the Country Inn and Suites. It seemed like there were several racers staying there and the motel was very accommodating, one of the biggest was that they decided to serve breakfast starting at 5:30 am rather than their normal 7 am start so that we could all enjoy a bite to eat before heading out. It wasn't just a limited fruit, toast and coffee showing either but they went to the trouble to do up the full breakfast complete with eggs, sausage, waffles and potatoes.


We were all super stoked to be able to have some actual food in us before the race, well all except for Carlos who opted for this gourmet bowl of faux Trix.




Time for eating was done, time for racing was quickly approaching so off to Miller Park we flew for the last minute info and the cue sheets dispersing. The temps were supposed to be in the mid 30s, it felt like less than that, the winds were supposed to be 20 mph, they felt like they were blowing stronger and the gust were way more than 20 mph. And then there was the sun, it was supposed to be sunnier than it was, more a partly sunny/partly cloudy mix but there were only two stretches of sun that I remember. It wasn't ideal but it was what it was and there wasn't any changing it.



Taking off out of the park we quickly turned north and into the teeth of the wind, 3 miles of pavement and we were onto the "gravel". The roads around Grinnell were gravel only in the name, there wasn't much for aggregate except in short chunky patches here and there. Soft in the good sections and down right quagmires in most places, I was quickly becoming aware that I never should have taken the 17 cog off and put the 15 on the week before the race. Had the roads stayed dry it might have been a different story but there weren't dry and the choice of going for the faster cog was not the one I should have made, the phrase "spin it to win it" was definitely the way to go on Saturday.





I was hoping that once we ventured a little bit down the course things would improve but the roads just kept getting softer, the distance between the mud holes shorter and the mud itself deeper as the miles ticked off. Kent Church Road was a particularly gnarly mud ribbon that will haunt me for the foreseeable future, most of the MMR roads I've ridden here in Nebraska were in better shape than many sections of Kent Church Road.






As bad as Kent Church Road was, it was like a paved super highway in comparison to what awaited us on 330th Ave. To call it a road would have been giving it way more credit than it deserved, it was a one mile long muddy, slip and slide. Wet, nasty, sticky mud; definitely not rideable and barely suited for walking. By the time you were 200 yards in the mud covered everything; the bike, the shoes and if you let it that mud would creep into your mind and steal your will to go on. I know you're thinking I'm embellishing but as I was trudging through mud that only a pig would love, I kept seeing riders take a hard right on 220th Street right after the B road ended and pull the plug on their C.O.G experience. Not that I could blame them, those that pressed on were only met with more of the same cold temps, muddy roads and soul crushing winds, who is to say that they weren't the smart ones.




I kept waiting for the roads to get better but they never did, I kept expecting the winds to start drying out the mud or at least dying down a bit, but it never did. It just one disheartening, evil roller after another. Usually rollers are the type of hills that make a good gravel race, but the C.O.G was not to be one of those races. The downhills were muddy and treacherous, often causing you to need to scrub speed or use a herculean amount of body English at times to keep the bike on course, the uphills were no better as it seemed like almost every one got super soft about halfway up it robbing what little momentum you were able to carry through the downhill. If you let your mind wander from the task at hand too long, the course definitely had the ability to ruin your day and I was actually pretty surprised that I never did see anyone crash. The winds were brutal heading into them but almost worse when you turned and they hit you as a cross wind, trying like hell to blow you off that miserable muddy ribbon of dirt. As the miles per hour started to slow down, the hours on course started to speed up; I kept doing the math in my head... hours left until cutoff divided by current average speed. Finishing under ten hours slipped away and I kept going, finishing an hour after the official finish went a bit after that and I kept going. It was around the time that there was a real concern about being able to finish before the sun went down that I started to second guess if it was wise to try to tough it out and go for the finish. Riding after dark seemed like a really bad idea when combined with all of the all the previous mentioned challenges. Guitar Ted and Dave put on a tough and challenging race, part of the challenge came in the form of cue sheet only navigation, no GPS files to help, no Garmin beeps to tell you when to turn. It was already difficult to look at the cues in the daylight; between the wind making your eyes water and the road conditions making it dangerous to divert your attention away for more than a few seconds at a time, trying to do so without light wasn't something I wanted to do. I pulled off in the ditch, found a pile of dirt to hide behind to get out of the wind and redid the math at least half a dozen time, but the math didn't lie and the math always came up with the same answer. As I was sitting there in the ditch I made the call to get picked up after 66 miles of pure hell, it wasn't the 110 miles I wanted but sometimes that's life. The course itself was a good mix of challenge and beauty, I'd love to have seen what could have been on a day without the wind and rain. GT and Dave had made a great race course and one I could still appreciate even after deciding to pull the plug. Sitting there packing up the gear to make the last few mile slog into Malcolm Iowa, Craig from South Dakota, who I'd met from previous gravel races, rolled up and we started chatting it up. I didn't realize that he was only about 20 minutes or so behind me the whole day, had I known that I probably would have ridden with him. Craig was also doing his own math and had come to the same conclusion as I had and so I offered him a ride back to Grinnell with the crew coming to get me. It was kind of nice having someone to ride the last little bit with after suffering through the day mostly solo, wished it would have been under better circumstances but it was nice none the less and Craig even shared his "emergency Peanut M & Ms" with me. Pure bonus there.



Back at Miller Park we watched as the first finishers stared to roll in. Out on the road, in my mind I had already envisioned the fast folks being long since done but the winning time was just 10 minutes shy of the 9 hour mark. Nobody's race was an easy one as it turned out, everyone was having a tough time with the course, so there was some solace in that. The winner came in about 20 minutes before second place but the second place finisher had beer and pizza waiting at the finish line so there could easily be a valid argument made about which one actually won. The third or fourth place finisher was on an Ice Cream Truck, mad props to that guy for getting that beast to the line in time. The official number for the race, 76 people started and only 10 finished under the 6:00 pm cutoff, as I said it was not an easy day for anyone on Saturday.



After watching the under 10 hour finishers come rolling through, we headed to the hotel to clean up and drop the bikes before heading back to Miller Park to watch Roy roll in at bout 7:40 pm. He might not have earned an official time but he earned three heart felt hugs and numerous high fives from us; he was the only finisher among our group, even if it was unofficial.


We scooped up Roy and his bike and headed back to the Prairie Canary, this time for a steak dinner and rousing story telling about each of our experiences that day.


The C.O.G was an unmerciful race but the challenges of the day made for a great experience, one I won't soon forget and one I got to share it all with a great group of friends, I couldn't really ask for anything more than that.

I know this post might make it seem like I didn't have fun at the C.O.G and that wouldn't be accurate. Sure the mud and the wind sucked but I knew going into a March race on a bike with one gear that things were going to be challenging and that there was a pretty good chance that the weather was going to suck, so I kind of got what I expected in that regard. I think had you stripped out the elements the course itself would have been a ton of fun and the roads I cursed at would have been great roads to ride in drier conditions. It wasn't all negative, I had the nutrition on lock, my fitness was there as well, legs were getting a little bit tired but not overly so; had there been more daylight I think I could have finished and still felt alright. Gearing was wrong but that was my doing, I should have stuck with the original gearing or maybe even went up to an 18 or 19 tooth cog, that's all on me. Looking forward to the Gents Race this weekend, it should be much warmer and a totally different kind of race, should be a good time and hopefully a good race season this year.