What a Lousy Summer

It’s been a difficult spring and early summer for us here in the Midwest. Every weekend when I’d planned to start racing, it’s raining!! I’m too old to spend a few hours wet and listening to my drivetrain eroding pedal stroke by pedal stroke, so it’s taken a while to get going. With my first target race rapidly approaching I entered a local gravel race, the Cow Pie Classic on my mountain bike, set up as I hoped to race later in the summer. Fortunately there was a MTB category for this 100k’s of dry dirt roads.

The organizers had a separate start for the MTB division and for those who didn’t think they could hold 22mph, which was probably appropriate given the difference in my gearing. I got first row in beautiful downtown Ionia, Michigan and readied for go time.

It was fast. The race had us climb out of the valley up a series of roads, each one a punchy climb until we reached the gravel roads heading into the countryside. I held on to the two pushing the pace and looked back: we already had a gap. This gap extended as we rolled through the farmland. Ionia county is mostly known for cattle and pigs as well as flowers, so it was a confusing gift for my panting olfactory system.

The race uses three farms, one a cow farm, hence its name, to break up the field, adding singletrack, fields and double track to test the racers skills and figured these would be my best opportunity to separate from the others. One was within a few miles from the finish - this would be my chance.

I always went to the front through the farms to hopefully stretch out the group, but they continually put me under pressure on the downhill straightaways. The last farm came at mile 59 and the elastic finally snapped, for me and the guy in third. Thats how the race ended, me rolling in in second and first in the MTB category. Bike was sweet, it was a hard day racing. Fun times.

Related Articles

These articles might be interesting for you as well: