When Mike told me about a new local race set for early April—the Louisville Classic—I had two thoughts. 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 … More Instant Classic: Meet the Louisville Classic Gravel Grinder
In 10 years of racing gravel, I’ve never known where to fit Oklahoma. The Mid South tempted me toward Stillwater each March, but I knew the horror stories. Red mud deep enough for every letter of murder. Chains chewed. Derailleurs gargled and spat. Some springs: hypothermia. Couldn’t I just believe Oklahoma’s brutal history without sticking … More Mid South 2024: The Durability of Joy
The rain reached the roof of Pete’s camper just after midnight on race day, and I was glad for it. That’s the sound of a heatwave dying, I told the ceiling. Foul is fair. Lincoln had been murderously hot all week, with heat indexes nosing toward 120. I worried I’d have to tell my brother … More Gravel Worlds 2023: Fair Is Foul
This year’s Solstice 100 had no business hurting like it did. Still, I spent the last third of my seventh Solstice 100 in a bonked bewilderment. And I couldn’t tell you why. Was I falling sick? Did the squishy roads zap more energy than I realized? Did I foul up my food? My pacing? My … More Solstice 100: Your Lucky Bad Day
My memory of that Saturday evening last year is pretty sketchy. But within an hour or so of finishing Gravel Worlds’ inaugural Long Voyage 300, I’m pretty sure I promised my daughter we’d tackle the 50k Buccaneer together in 2022. Sydney liked that idea. So did my wife. And you bet your butt I accepted … More Gravel Worlds Grows a New Mindset
There are two things I’ll go to hell for in a bike race: A good friend, and a good story. At the 2022 Pine Island Gravel Odyssey, I got to go to hell for both. Marty and I drove to Spearfish, S.D., to climb Pine Island’s tallest tree: the 210-mile Lodgepole Voyage (formerly known as … More The Pointy End at Spearfish
My oldest daughter let me know she wouldn’t be at the start of the Pirate Cycling League’s first Long Voyage 300. (She had cross country practice after school.) But she said she knew what she’d be missing. “That’s a lot of mental illness in one place,” she said. I refused to agree with her, but … More Long Voyage 300: At Least We’re Highly Functional
The drive to the fifth running of the Solstice 100 looked far different from the first. Back in 2017, just a few motley cars made the hop mostly unnoticed from Lincoln to nearby Pleasant Dale. We parked in the shade outside Big V’s Bar and Grill. By 2021, the start line had marched south to … More Solstice 100: Chart Your Course
I sat down in the dust with a kingsnake and hit my low point in June 2019. At least, it’s what passed for a low point then. Heat dazed, I’d just watched a racer flop his right turn on V Avenue some four miles east of Council Grove, Kan. He dashed his head against the … More Unbound Gravel and the Same Old Serpent
A professional mentor of mine said every article he ever wrote started with the same sentence: I just learned the damnedest thing. The late Brian Doyle never published that sentence. I don’t figure he even bothered to write it out most times he started a story. But for him, just thinking it, just stepping his … More Solstice 2020: The Damnedest Thing
Dirt Tan Bike Club 