Dirt Tan Bike Club

When Mike told me about a new local race set for early April—the Louisville Classic—I had two thoughts.

• Thought one: How can you call a new race a classic? It felt like naming my son President Marcus Wendt. (Maybe. But let’s wait and see.)
• Thought two: What do I care about the name? A new and affordable grassroots race—in a cool small town easy driving distance from Lincoln, on challenging new roads, set before the summer heat kicks in—is going to meet my wildest approval.

I checked the family calendar and signed my classic fanny up for the 100k.

Gosh, I looked forward to this race all winter. Imagining the hills down there helped me through those cinderblock months of winter training in my dim basement.

Louisville made such a nice contrast with the Mid South on my spring calendar. I pictured going from one of the country’s biggest, rowdiest gravel bashes to something almost microscopically local. An NBA game followed by a parade down Main Street. 

My leadup to the Mid South had flirted with perfection—good training, good nutrition, good sleep, zero stress. Then came the equally friendly hospitality and race-day conditions we found in Oklahoma. If a big-time race like the Mid South could be that pleasant—just imagine how downright lovely a small local race would feel!

I’m familiar with the gravel gods. And I should’ve seen the donkey kick I had coming: kidney high and fierce as the wind. But I didn’t. What came for me in the days ahead of this new race would not have been entirely out of place in the Book of Job or a Cormac McCarthy novel.

First, a stomach bug made the silent hop from the Lincoln High track team into my family’s home. It hit Sydney so fast in the night, she barely had time to sit up. It was as if a grenade had vomited in that teenager’s cluttered bedroom. Nothing went untouched.

When it was Mia’s turn, she staggered out of the bathroom wild-eyed as if she’d seen the other side. She wasn’t having my empathy. Her glare said she knew I’d given her life—but that life had now warped its shape to make space for this porcelain hell. And she would hold me accountable for this new truth at a time and place of her choosing.

Beth tasted it next and warned me to make my bed on the couch. My stomach kinked in solidarity.

After this pestilence came the plague of squirrels.

They’d been working against me all spring, but I hadn’t known it. My first and only clue came the Tuesday evening before the race. I started my van to drive home from work and every nature of warning flashed on my dashboard. Power steering: gone. Antilock brakes: done. Blindspot monitoring: blinded.

Something electrical had gone very much haywire. But the van otherwise ran as normal. I drove home, got Beth to follow me, and went straight to the dealer to drop the key off in the after-hours box.

What I know about the electronic intricacies of a 2017 Toyota Sienna wouldn’t quarter-fill a sandwich bag. I could no more fix this van than I could solder a microchip in my laptop. So it didn’t occur to me to pop the hood and check things for myself. But when the good folks at the Toyota dealership did as much, here’s what they saw.

Animal control plucked five terrified rodents from my engine’s many nooks, then left the mechanics to calculate their leafy aftermath. The only vehicle with the hitch I needed to carry my bike to Louisville was very much out of commission. In fact, it wasn’t clear whether the Wendt family van was totaled.

Next up: an unholy forecast. Race day morning warned of sustained winds above 35 mph with gusts up to 50. Don’t dawdle, because by mid-afternoon those gusts would tip toward 70 mph, then bring thunderstorms and a chance of hail the size quarters. My stomach kinked all over again.

Uh, you guys, I texted teammates Sam and Mike. Will this be fun? Will this be safe?

Said Sam: Fun? No. Safe? Borderline.

It took Mike to pry me off the fence. I’ll transcribe his reply verbatim so you can appreciate his special verve.

Eric u braved shit weather in Iceland, the long voyage, unbound, … ur a hard man, a diesel. If my skinny candy-ass does it u better damn well line up.

-Mike Suing

(Mike has a way with words.)

Thus motivated, I begged a ride off Sam Kiddoo. We met Sam’s dad, Scott, in Louisville.

Anybody who read our Mid South recap knows the debt of gratitude I owe Scott. Well, I’m just as indebted to Mike, who always has more faith in me than I do. And if I was torn over who to ride with and work for in Louisville, I didn’t need to be.

The total field of roughly 170 riders—maybe triple what I expected—rolled out of Louisville and shot straight uphill. And the quaint little local race went full savage from the gun. I worked to figure out how to handle my bike over washboards with this whipping 40 mph crosswind. But the folks around me all seemed to ride comfortably, as if Hell were their native county.

Ten minutes in, I found myself maybe 30 yards behind Mike, riding with my normalized power tucked somewhere in Zone Obscenity. I eased up knowing that if I bridged to Mike working this hard, I’d be no use to him once I got there. He’d either relent and settle back here, or I’d see him at the finish.

I grinned and watched Mike get smaller and smaller up the road. (“Candy-ass,” my ass.) Scott, Sam and I settled in for the work ahead.

I’ve been doing this a long time, but I have virtually no experience riding in wind like that. Yes, it could kick up like a banshee in Iceland. But when we were there at least, it tended to come and go. Scream like a toddler, then get bored and nap. This Nebraska wind wasn’t going to do anything that day except get madder.

Another difference: We could’ve cared less about our speed in Iceland. If the wind got under our skin, there was nothing stopping us from just pulling over and having a good cry in the black sand. Let Addison feed you gummy worms until you feel better about your life.

Louisville wasn’t like that. This was a gravel race.

It’s easy to think of wind as binary. Half the time it’s working for you; half against. But this wind was something closer to boxing. And sure, taking a jab straight into your face was certain to be bad. But that didn’t mean a hook behind your ear would somehow be helpful.

Whether this wind sped you up or slowed you down, its force was always a threat to knock you off your line and into something you didn’t want. Washboards. Loose stuff. Ruts. Another rider. Another ditch. There were experienced folks out there who straight up just fell over sideways. One moment: biking. The next: on their cheek.

Each turn on the course became a pass/fail pop-quiz on how to keep it upright now. Was there a better way to hold your bars or position your body to make this ride less of a monkey knife fight? I tried to copy off the work of other riders, but there were no right answers. Everybody struggled. And the wind just got stronger.

Up ahead, you’d see riders turning into the headwind (their groans lost in the noise of it). And you’d feel a wave of something like dread or nausea knowing the same corner was coming to turn on you. I did not feel young.

We made one such turn late in the course and I told Sam this was fine—on account of I’d decided I liked the flavor of shit. Scott let us know this would be a four-mile stretch straight into it, and I said oh goodie. You just put your head down and you hurt and you tell yourself it won’t last forever. It only hurts right now. And by coincidence, now. And still now. But not forever. No. Not forever.

At three and a quarter miles, I told Scott I wanted my mother. He laughed and said just a little more. After a little more, we turned. And life got better again. Then worse. Then better. Then better still.

By chance, most of the MMR on the course happened to come with tailwinds. They offered us good grip, nice width and few ruts. In other words: It was relatively safe here to let the bikes go. We sat up tall to let the wind get hold of us, then shifted high and just ran like boys.

It didn’t seem fair that these easy miles should whip by so fast, we said, while the hard ones pulled like blue teeth. But they all count, Scott said. Every one of them counts.

We counted them down from 62, then spotted the finish line at the bottom of the hill. We let it run one last time. It felt so good to be in it. Then so good to be done.

Just days after its first run, I’m ready to call Louisville a classic and mean it. It captures so much of what I fell in love with about this sport years ago, racing these small events in places like Malcolm and Malvern, Percival and Pleasant Dale. I love that it brings us to beautiful country many of us wouldn’t otherwise see. I love that the dollars we spend in Louisville really can make a local difference. And I love seeing the race calendar swell into the cooler spring and fall.

Even the unusual setup where we parked at Lilac Hill, then rode several blocks to stage for the start, worked just fine. It didn’t hurt a thing to give everybody a good look at Team Copple GMC, the local dealership that sponsored the race and hosted the neutral rollout. (You never know who might be in the market for a van with unchewed wiring.)

And even when registrations far outpaced projections, the amazing venue, experienced caterers and helpful volunteers were all 100% ready to welcome and host and feed the gravel family well at this friendly finish line.

There are fewer and fewer races out there where I feel like what we get far outpaces the registration we’re asked to pay. The Louisville Classic Gravel Grinder is one of those events. And I hope this new small-town classic is here to stay.