This is Gravel

My day at Unbound…

“Bet you miss the WorldTour!” She shouted, as she blew by me at warp speed, spinning lithely through the grass on my left, as I trudged, one foot getting stuck after the other, through quicksand like mud. I was at a standstill, yet my mind was racing as fast as she was: questioning my life choices, my gear choices. Questioning how the hell I ended up in a middle of nowhere town in a middle of nowhere state, my feet stuck in the middle of a pool of mud, my bike in my hands, and my pride left somewhere around three kilometers down the road behind me.

When I say she, I’m referring to one of the leaders of the women’s race, who was at the front of the pack… of the race which started two minutes behind me. She flew past as I walked, no - waddled - pushing my bike rather sluggishly, slipping and sliding in my carbon soled road shoes with plastic road cleats, dejectedly across the muddy dirt road. A couple of kilometers later, my chain came off of the front chainring on a downhill before a short climb and unable to get it on after trying on the fly, I decided to stop and make it right. Yet after five minutes of trying (yes, five, I even checked the file on TrainingPeaks), it was as if the links and the chainring wouldn’t match up. My bike had become some sort of sick brain teaser that had no real solution. I stood there staring at my beautiful machine lying on it’s side on the ground, baffled at it’s - my - inability to make this right. And then, after a few more seconds I came to the realization that I would in fact not be able to pedal up the hill in front of me. My head drooped as I picked up my wounded steed, and I began to trudge my way up the steep grade. I could have cried. More of the women’s field flew past.

“Is this gravel?” I asked myself. Because if it was, I wasn’t quite sure it was for me.

—

This “idea” only started a few weeks before and it wasn’t exactly instigated by me. A short week before the Giro d’Italia, I received an email from our bike sponsor, BMC, asking me if I’d like to participate in Unbound, the world’s biggest gravel race. A race which took place an even shorter five days after said three week Grand Tour. I wasn’t exactly keen, with such a short turnaround and having spent only five days at home in the entire four months prior, I thought I could use some rest. A phone call from the team and a little bit of coercing later and all of the sudden I had a ticket to Kansas.

I had never done a gravel race before and it had been three years since I had even touched a gravel bike. So I gave my friend Ian Boswell a few calls to learn a bit more about the sport, the race, and figure out what I needed to know. After my extensive research I headed to Unbound with one objective: avoid flat tires and let the legs take care of the rest. Yet even with that in mind, I thought I better take care of every little detail and leave no stone unturned. I acquired some special prototype tires from Pirelli, developed especially for this race, with a thicker more puncture protective casing. BMC provided me a brand new Kaius, their highest level aerodynamic gravel racing bike, a machine of dreams. A special aerodynamic handlebar, brand new Campagnolo Ekar as well as their carbon gravel wheels. The bike weighed 8 kilos, probably one of the lightest and most aerodynamic gravel bikes on earth. I had the tools.

I contacted our team’s nutritionist to work on a nutrition strategy to optimize my carbohydrate loading in the days before the race. I avoided fiber in the days leading up to be able to avoid GI distress. I brought with me all of the latest and greatest sports nutrition products to maximize my carbohydrate intake at 120 grams per hour for the duration of the 330 kilometer race. I brought my extra special (and expensive) aerodynamic socks to save a couple watts over the course of the day. I even purchased a one-hundred and seventy-eight euro aerodynamic ridged base layer - a sort of bra with ridged sleeves to go under a jersey and save a few watts of drag at forty kilometers per hour.

I was prepared. I was ready. And I was going to give this thing my best shot.

—

I was stuck in the middle of the road. My wheels would no longer turn, mud lodged in every crevice of my once white bicycle. I un-clipped, dismounted and tried to push. The bike sunk deeper into the mud. I tried to lift it, but my once eight kilo Kaius now weighed about twenty-eight, and my feeble professional cyclist arms lacked the power to even lift it off of the ground.

“Is this gravel?” I asked myself, as I used my hands to wipe as much mud as I could off of my tires, sticking my fingers wherever they would fit to get enough space for the wheels to turn more than an inch with each thrust of the cranks. I regretted laughing at and leaving the paint stick my Dad had purchased me at the hotel whose sole purpose was for this exact moment.

“Brent told me he didn’t even have to un-clip last year!” I told him when he presented me with the twelve-inch long piece of wood from Home Depot which I am now looking at, still unused.

—

The day before the race, I went for a pre-ride of the first thirty kilometers of the course with my former teammate Brent Bookwalter. Even with the jet lag of the transcontinental flight the day before, my legs felt strong. “Giro form,” I thought. I asked him how much pavement there would be in the 200 mile race.

“About a mile,” he said, laughing. I thought he was joking. I assumed a gravel race was something like half and half road and gravel, maybe 70/30, but not the entire thing! I really was a noob, I realized. It was my first ride on the new gravel bike and my first time on gravel in a few years, but I was still impressed by my comfort and ease on the roads, with the equipment I had I felt like I could float over the stones and rail the corners. We reached the “muddy” section the people had spoken about and we passed with ease. “Whatever,” I told myself. “I’m going to crush it.” I looked forward to race day with a giddiness I haven’t felt in some time.

—

As I labored and pushed my bike, one carbon soled road shoe in front of the other at a speed slower than some sloths, I questioned how many watts my one-hundred and seventy-eight euro aerodynamic ridged base layer was actually saving me. My socks too. And my super light bike that now weighed over three times it’s measured weight. I laughed. One of those uncomfortable laughs, like, “What. The. Actual. Fuck.”

But I continued. I made it to the end of one mud section and somehow arrived at the next one and made the same error. I don’t really know why I didn’t follow the people in front of me, when they parted for the grass each time… I think I thought I knew better.

I didn’t. And as I got stuck there the second, third, and fourth times, I did not know if this hellish muddy section of road would ever even end. So I started to calculate the speed I was traveling - around an average of ten to fifteen kilometers per hour. Then I thought about the distance I had to go: 300 kilometers. And as anyone who has a few functioning brain cells can realize, that adds up to a very fucking long time. As I walk/biked for kilometer after kilometer, I realized that I may not make it by dark. Yet I told myself that, since I flew all the way out to Kansas from Italy and then France for this one damn race, I would finish, no matter what.

Eventually, after the mud, after walking up a hill, after the mud again and the mud again, I did indeed make it to the other side. I was however, a very very long way down from the leaders. But I told myself, I was only an hour and a half in. And this thing was 10 hours on a normal day. So I decided to go as hard as I could for the remainder of the race. I rode from group to group, passing rider after rider along the way, including my new friend who trolled me as I was stuck in the mud, some fans, some friends, and others, until I ended up in a group that was moving at a good pace. And then I ended up in another and another, until I was with three other guys somewhere around the middle of the race. And then it got hot. And my fueling strategy of 120 grams per hour seemed to be weighing heavily on my stomach. I was nearing closer and closer to the limit of vomiting, while simultaneously overheating from the extra layer of my one-hundred and seventy-eight euro aerodynamic ridged base layer to the point I just had to stop on the side of the road under a tree.

I took off my jersey, then my advanced aerodynamic sports bra, and there I was, alone, shirtless, nothing but brown muddy shorts on my bottom and an unsuitable pair of shoes on my feet, somewhere in the middle of the flint hills of Kansas, without a cyclist nor a person in sight. I looked across the vast expanse, with it’s lush green prairies, rolling hills, and these god-forsaken dirt roads as far as the eye could see. I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I was doing there. But as I regained composure, I put my jersey on my back, the overpriced unhelpful piece of material in my pocket, and I continued along down the path, a fraction of a watt slower, but a hell of a lot more comfortable. I cruised slowly for a bit, until I came back to life and upped my rhythm. And somehow, I kept catching people, and found more groups to roll with.

As we passed the riders from the shorter races along the route, I got cheers from fans, from the support crews, even from the other guys I was racing with.

“Maybe this is gravel,” I thought… And then I thought about the time I got a puncture and everyone who passed asked if I needed any help. And I thought about the Italian dude who made me stop so he could help me fix my rear derailleur when it wasn’t shifting for around twenty kilometers (did you know these things have a clutch?), and then it worked like a dream. I thought about the guy I met in the refrigerator section of Wal-Mart the night before as I was buying my Almond Milk and Cocoa Pebbles, who offered to help me with anything I could need for the race. I thought about the dude at the aid station who bought me a Dr. Pepper when I had no money for the soda I so desperately needed. I thought about my parents waking up at 4 am to join me for my pre-race meal, and sitting under the rain waiting for me at the finish line.

I thought about how pumped everyone seemed to be here, from the riders, the support crews, the volunteers, and the people on the side of the road.

And then I realized: This is gravel.

—

So thank you Mattia for the mechanical help. Thanks Tomas for your offer. Thank you Eliot for the soda. Thank you Tobyn for the kind words after the finish line. Thank you to Jonty, David, Joan, and everyone at BMC for bringing me here. Thanks to my Mom and Dad, the OG supporters. Thank you to Ian for the advice, even if I still ended up being helplessly unprepared. And thank you to every single person out there for allowing me to share the road with you. Thanks to those who cheered me on. And finally: thank you to the gravel world for letting me be a part of your orbit for a weekend.

—

And an aside, just for the record: this race seriously fucks you up. I’m sitting here, half upright, half lying in bed, and my heart rate is more than double it’s normal resting pulse, twenty-four hours after I crossed the finish line …That can’t be normal. “Is this gravel?”