March provided Michigan with summer like weather and the 24th was no exception. The weather was perfect for the fourth iteration of the Barry Roubaix- Killer Gravel Road Race, held in beautiful Barry County.
Jeff, Seth, and John traveled up on Friday night, meeting up with Jeff Buerman of Michigan Youth Cycling and Katie of Speed Merchants. After a night’s sleep and several craft beers the guys worked their way over to registration, picked up their race bibs and then grabbed an outstanding breakfast at Sandy’s Country Kitchen. I mean who knew that you could get oatmeal with trimmings and homemade whole wheat toast for $3.72. The food was excellent and a great deal.
By the time breakfast was done, Todd, Wendy, and Kim had made it to the registration area and everyone hooked up. After some quick discussions on race strategy and kitting up we had just enough time to make it to the start line.
Todd and Wendy went out in Wave 1 for the 62 mile Pro race, while Kim was in wave 2, John and Seth were in Wave 3, and Jeff started in Wave 4, for the 36 mile rendition.
I can’t speak for the other wave starts or course traffic but here are my observations from wave 4; the pace was pretty good out of the gate, even with the “neutral rollout”. I started mid to back pack and had to pick my way through a ton of people (next year I’m wiggling in on the front of the start wave). There were just too many “out for a ride” people in this wave clogging up the road.
Entering onto Duffy Rd., the first dirt road section helped to spread out some people as the course started to point a bit up hill at this point.
The turn onto Wildwood/ Sager Rd. was a bit tricky and was completely congested. It looked like Normandy Beach on D- Day with racers lying all over the place in the sand. The congestion was horrendous, with people walking the only lines that could be ridden and then bitching at you (the riders) that you were in their way. Just to keep this in perspective; I still stand by my mantra that, “It’s just amateur bike racing in Michigan”, but for love of Pete people get out of the way if you can’t climb or ride the line. Again, I’ll fix this by getting a start closer to the front of the pack next year (yes, I agree that I bring a little of this upon myself).
The rest of the race was uneventful until the turn back onto W. Sager Rd. and then onto Shaw Rd. Again D-Day type conditions, but not due to inability of the riders, this section was just plain torture and forced many (damn near all) of the riders to dismount and run, walk, crawl, or curl up into the fetal position. After working my (on foot) through this section I realized that I had somehow lost five miles of tracking on my Garmin and that I only had four and a half miles to go and not nearly ten. With this new found information I knew that I had a lot of gas left in the tank and subsequently that I hadn’t worked hard enough in the first part of the race, but that’s a whole story in itself.
I turned onto the pavement on Gun Lake Rd. knowing that I only had about 4 miles left and there was only one real climb between me and a beer or two at the finish. About a quarter of mile after the turn I saw Seth sitting up the road. I mean he was just sitting there waiting. I saw this and turned on the gas, as I pulled up he swung and told me that he’d been waiting for me and that he was just about to leave when he saw me. We chatted for a minute or two, I told him I appreciated it and had been working to try and catch him and John for the past two hours. We then turned on the after burners four the last four miles or so. Trading pulls all the way into the finish. We caught over 30 people in the last 4 miles, a couple of racers asked if they could jump on for the ride in. We told them, “yeah, go ahead” only to pop them off the back within seconds. That is a great feeling but also told me that I hadn’t left it all out on the course.
Seth and I crossed the line side by side and were greeted by John and Kim, both of who had finished ahead of us.
We hung out waiting for Todd and Wendy to cross the line and actually missed them because we had miscalculated their speed. They looked spent and you could tell that they had left it all out there on the course.
Unfortunately no one on Mom & Pop hit the podium this year but we all had a great time and learned a few things about ourselves and our teammates.
I’m proud to race with such a diverse group of my friends. The people who make up this team are my cycling family and I can’t give them enough kudos for all that they bring to the table.
Brad competed in a Cross Fit style competition on the 24th at Life Time Fitness in canton, MI. I haven’t received an update on how it went, but knowing Brad and his abilities he rocked it out!
Next up is our annual foray into crit racing at Runway Plaza in Ann Arbor, MI aka The AASTS (Ann Arbor Spring Training Series). I’m sure we’ll see a few of you out there for this craziness. Until next time, keep the rubber side down and continue to race and more importantly have fun on the bike!!!
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