When I learned I was among the 100 riders invited to the Pirate Cycling League’s first 300-mile event, The Long Voyage, I was jabbed with a twist cone of excitement and dread. And right away, I thought of the Barkley Marathons. That infamous off-trail race in Tennessee selects just 40 runners each year, and shares … More We Regret to Congratulate You.

Better husbands than me have been guilty of the wandering eye. Beth caught mine years ago and promptly jabbed it with her thumb. “Ow, Jeez!” I staggered backwards, pressed a palm to my face and took a knee. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “I was only looking.” I blinked hard and tried not … More Surviving Gravel’s Sirens

People are poking some predictable fun at DK’s new name. You’ll recall Lifetime parted ways with the event’s cofounder in June and committed to renaming the race. The original title’s racist connotations had grown intolerable, and the folks in Emporia and at Lifetime hunkered down for several months to do their work. They went public … More Same Great Gravel Taste! America’s biggest gravel race gets a rebrand.

I arrived at my in-laws’ with bloodshot eyes. That morning’s solo ride hadn’t gone well. Enough sweat had dumped down my face to blind, and I had to ditch my sunglasses just to see the road in front of me. The extra air helped, but the wind burned, and the dust bit. Add some heat … More What Are You, Exactly?

Most of us learned on Fathers’ Day of Jim Cummins’ firing from the race he fathered. Cummins helped establish the Dirty Kanza back in 2006, and he fostered the race’s explosive growth in the years that followed. In the process, he helped make Emporia, Kan., one of the gravel family’s cultural hometowns. Cummins can take … More A Divorce in the Gravel Family

Gravel’s coming back, dirtheads. Here and there, a few races are willing to peek their heads out and make a run. Too soon? Not soon enough? My own feelings are a badly mixed drink of #pedaldamnit and #hunkerdown. Ask me whether racing’s return marks a victory for our community or a failure of it, and … More Racing through the Apocalypse

For the last six weeks, everything I’ve tried to write for this biking blog has gone straight to dirt. There’s so much to say … about what this pandemic has done to our lives and to our sport … but I just haven’t had the will to ride down those paths. OK. No problem, Wendt. … More Biking around the Writer’s Block