You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own, you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.
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.
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.
This has been one of those races always on the "bucket list" but never on the schedule, until this year. I am not a fan of mud, not necessarily because it's usually associated with wet, cold weather either... the toll it takes on bike and equipment is often disastrous and costly. However Jackie, "lets not sign up for every race next year", decided that this was the year where she would sign up for all the races and then let me know she'd signed up so that I could also sign up. So pretty much just like every previous year except this year she decided that we'd make the journey down to Stillwater and both have our first taste of Oklahoma's red dirt and hope it wasn't red mud as it's infamous for being. Since you need to get on registering the day the event opens you just never know what the weather is going to be like 6 months down the road when the event actually takes place. So we tossed our names in the hat and hoped for the best.
On Friday morning a few of us formed a caravan and made the drive down to Stillwater to catch the expo and get settled in before the race on Saturday.
The atmosphere is something else down there, the live music, the vendors, the food trucks, the number of people milling about he expo and the number of closed off blocks of city streets is just something you have to see to fully grasp. Your can tell that the city of Stillwater has fully embraced and supported the Mid South and that's something not every city does as well as it should. I'm sure that there are other events that rival the Mid South in such things but how many of those have the vibe, the ethos, the grassroots feel and, well, the Bobby?
It was great seeing some familiar faces and checking out some of the vendor booths and District Bicycles. If the expo was this much fun, what would the race bring tomorrow... I guess we'd find out.
As much fun as summer is with all the things, the things to do, the things to see and the things to travel to; it is also nice at the end of the summer when things slow down a bit and not every weekend if filled with a gravel event of one kind or another. We are now in that time period which means that more regular occurrences of the Saturday ride from Cycle Works will commence once again. I've kind of missed the rides.
The plan last Saturday was to head out to Denton and the Denton Wall but because of an error on my part we turned up too soon and never made the well. We still made it to Denton because while I'm not Ferdinand Magellan I can still find towns, so I got that going for me. It was an honest mistake, pulled up an old route labeled as the wall and didn't double check it... stuff happens.
While we missed the wall we still found plenty of hills to go up and down, mostly up it seemed. And that headwind, don't even get me started on that... seems like if it's not blazing hot or Siberian cold around here the wind it do like to blow. Not a fan... ha, get it... not a fan, of the wind but whatcha gonna do except put your head down and pedal. It did make it feel like we were climbing most of the way to Denton even though we weren't actually. Mid-West Hills.
Thanks to Doug we even managed a ditch beer stop, I'm a bit rusty on these rides and am slacking in the planning and the beerin.
We did make a stop at Saro and Canyon Joe's on the way back into town, both were tasty. Not much in the way of pictures, camera is in for repair/replacement if they can't fix it so it's just the eye-phone right now. It takes decent enough pictures but it's a lot more difficult to get those quick snaps while riding so hopefully the Canon will be back in action soon. Sure would like it if someone out there would make a rugged camera that would shoot RAW and have the ability to customize camera settings like the advanced point and shoot cameras do. While they are good for pictures, they sometimes have troubles with the gravel dust and general jostling of the bike after a few years of abuse... someone help me here, please.
Enjoy the video version of the ride, going to try to keep those going through winter also but how many times can you record the same ride starting from the same spot and still make it interesting. I guess we will see on that one.
Last year the Mid South was the first and last of the big ones to hold an in person event before the world went nutty and we all learned how to cope without being around most of the populous. At that time things were just starting to shut down, it was before words like quarantine, social distancing and Zoom became part of the lexicon. This year, being the first one of the season and knowing now what we know, the Mid South decided that it could not hold a massive in person gathering and created the idea that became the Incredibly Socially Distanced Mid South. Not to be confused with a virtual event, those are so 2020. In all fairness the Mid South did take the virtual idea of 2020 and expanded it considerably through the use of partner shops, it was like Doordash for gravel events... Graveldash? If you couldn't go to Stillwater and the Mid South, the Mid South would come to you. Each partner shop would make a local course for the 100/50 mile cycling events and the 50 K running event and you'd have the weekend of what would have been the official Stillwater version of the Mid South to get 'er done, as Larry would say.
I have never made the odyssey to Stilwater for the Mid South, I really dig the message and vibe they are sending out into the world and that Wintle guy is not without a modicum of charisma but there is also a reason why the moniker The Mud South caught on almost immediately following the name change. I think they have managed only two dry years out of ten and my derailleur is already quivering in the corner as a type this out due to the thought of that orange mud reeking havoc on it's shifty bits. This year though maybe my shifty bits would be safe, I mean it can't rain everywhere can it? I know a few folks that believe that the government is geo-engineering the weather, my bet is on Bobby however because maybe he was able to make it rain everywhere. The week and a half leading up to the Mid South here in Nebraska we had temperatures into the mid 70° range, almost unheard of around these parts and it looked like fantastically dry and abnormally warm weather for the Nebraska version of the Mid South. It was not to be however because as the 13th got nearer the forecast got worse and worse until it was almost certain anyone attempting the Mid South on Saturday or Sunday was going to get wet. Well played, Mr. Wintle, well played indeed.
Since the full Mid South experience was on it's way to Nebraska a few of us decided to get up at a most unholy hour to see if we could stay dry and when I say it was early, it was early, 2 am to be exact. How do you get up at 2 am, well math really. If you need 6 hours of sleep to function you start at 2 am and you start ticking off hours in a counter clockwise motion until you've made it backwards 6 hours and that number represents the time you should be asleep. This does take some fudging because time to bed might not equate to hours of sleep if you take a while to doze off, so plan accordingly.
We took off right around 4:30 am, perhaps even a touch sooner than that, and spent the first 30 miles in the dark. It wasn't horrible since the temperatures were right around 40 but it was harder to keep a decent pace for fear of out riding your lights and meeting something not so forgiving before you realized you were on top of it.
Rolled into the halfway point in Valparaiso feeling pretty good, average was right around 14 mph but I knew that we still had most of the climbing to do on the back half of the course.
Since this was the only town we went through on course until we were only a few miles from the finish I decided to spend maybe a bit more time than I needed to and get something to eat. This package of Oreo's must have slid right under the inspectors, the middle one didn't have any cookie parts and was only "stuf".
Things out of Valparaiso weren't bad either until just before Agnew when the really big rollers started and they just kept coming one after the other in an endless sea of gravel waves. Miles 75 through about 93 were some of the toughest I've done in recent memory and my poor early season legs were feeling every foot of elevation and as a consequence the average MPH sank like a pirate on his way to Davy Jones' locker.
Saw these fellers out there wrangling some fish and for a moment I pondered if I really would rather be fishing like the bumper sticker says. Nah, a bad day on the bike is still better than a good day fishing even if you do come home smelling worse than the bait some days.
Once our little group got fragmented I didn't see another soul shortly after Valparaiso until about mile 85 or so when one of the Lincoln Abraham's and friend came riding by... fun fact, none of them are actually named Abe or any derivative of Abe or Lincoln for that matter. Suspicious.
I'd been munching on Clif Bloks since leaving Valpo and that was doing me just fine until I ate the last of the old package and got really cheap and decided not to open a new one since I was within 15 miles of the end. That was a horrible call on my part and by the time I got to the last little MMR outside of Lincoln I was running on fumes and not the kind you sometimes blow out your chamois. My legs decided they had had enough and with a mere two miles to go I had to pull over and eat something. Thankfully I had a Clif Bar on me because the gooey, sugary blob of a Blok sounded stomach churning. I scarfed down the Clif Bar and it tasted better than any Clif Bar had any right to taste, the normal dry almost cardboard flavor and texture seemed to be replaced by something much more delectable. At that moment on the edge of that MMR two miles from the end, nothing in the world tasted better than that bar... heck for all I know I may have eaten the wrapper since I still haven't found it.
Snuck across the finish in just a tad over 8 hours of moving time, the goal was between 7.5 and 8 so I just missed that but all things considered I was not mad about that at all. I had a bit more non moving time than I wanted but I took the longer break in Valpo and I had to stop twice to fiddle with the GoPro, one time the dang thing stopped reading the card and I had to swap it out for a different one. Technology, so much fun until it's not. On the bright side for being as early in the year as it is I felt pretty good during the race and even the day after wasn't that bad. With the horrible January and February we've had that 100 miles was half of the total mileage so far this year. Best part was that the timing was impeccable, it wasn't long after I finished that the light rains started, another 30 minutes and I'd have been crying in the rain. But it was not to be and the derailleur was safe for at least another race.
