Gravel Worlds!!!

Today is Monday August 25 2025 and last Saturday i raced 78 miles over the rolling hills around Lincoln, Nebraska.

Gravel worlds!

The race in a nutshell...

• Hours 0-2 = fast.
• Hours 2-4 = very slow, paying the price for starting too fast.
• Hours 4-6 = recovered a bit, picked up the pace a little, finished the race in 6 hours and 3 minutes with a genuine smile on my face.

A more detailed race report...

5:00 am - alarm, coffee, pb&j, hard boiled eggs, banana, Gatorade, coffee.

6:05 am - pedal from hotel to race start, it's a 45 minute ride at a leisurely pace. The weather is perfect right now! Riding thru Lincoln Nebraska at 6 am on a quiet Saturday morning in perfect weather is pretty awesome.

6:35 am - wow this sunrise is amazing, take lots of pictures, really enjoying this warm up ride.

6:51 am - arrive at start line, find a convenient gap in the fencing and line up in the top 25%, the guy on the mic says "9 minutes to go".

7:00 am - go!

8:00 am - i wanted to go fast for the first hour and i've done that. Current average speed is over 16 mph and i still feel good.

9:00 am - i started too fast and now everyone is passing me, plus the fiddling i did to my saddle position in the previous few days is reeking havoc on my legs because i'm getting cramps in places i never cramp. At least i can no longer keep up with the guy blasting awful music from his phone.

10:00 am - Still getting passed by everyone, really struggling, the challenge now is how to stay positive. Stop and adjust the saddle.

11:00 am - That fully stocked rest area was a life saver. filled an entire bottle with pickle juice and drank it in about 8 minutes. So good. Feeling more optimistic. All these minimally maintained road sections are pretty sweet, fast dirt, rutted dirt, sketchy dirt, singletrack like dirt, its a nice change of pace from the seemingly endless gravel.

12:00 pm - The last hour has been pretty good, except for some slight right knee pain. 1 hour to go. Keegen Swenson and Matt Beers just passed me. Drank another full bottle of pickle juice.

1:00 pm - There is the finish line, thank fu*cking god!

So that's it. i didn't do as well as i wanted but that's life. i wanted to do a hard first hour and i did that but it turns out i went too hard. live and learn. The saddle snafu is pretty embarrassing. That's a dumb mistake on my part. On a positive not i went for a ride yesterday (Sunday) back in KC and i felt pretty good. So that's a good sign. I'm very excited to do the Little Sugar Mountain Bike race in Bentonville, AR in October.

Finally a big shout out to my wife and son who accompanied me on this Gravel Worlds Journey and were great helpers the entire time.  The little man is 10 and soon enough he'll be older and trips like this wont hold the same magic as they do right now. i'm incredibly grateful that we got to do this as a family.

Easy Bike Ride - Gravel Worlds Taper

Today is Monday August 18 2025 and on Saturday i did a bike ride.

i pedaled easy. Gravel worlds is this Saturday so i'm in taper mode. 

i don't really know how to properly taper for a race but i'm giving it my best effort. Yesterday and today were easy rides and or yoga.  i think i'll take tomorrow completely off and then probably do one hour trainer rides of varying intensities on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. 

Lately It's been very hot but we could get lucky with the race day forecast. Stay tuned on that. The race starts at 7am and if i can finish by 12:30 i'll miss the heat of the day and be done in time for lunch!

Bicycles!

 

Group Ride

Today is Thursday August 14 2025 and yesterday i did the group bike ride.

It was my best performance yet!

i still got dropped but it happened 5 to 10 minutes further into the ride than it normally does. Looking at the photographic evidence below i see i lasted 48 minutes. Although to be fair it felt like we went a bit slower than usual plus it was the largest group i've seen, meaning there were more wheels to grab onto when the going got tough. 

BK even made an appearance this week!

There's no question that i'm faster today then when i first did this ride seven weeks ago so that's encouraging. 

Since Gravel Worlds is a week from Saturday i'll probably skip this ride next week but then hopefully i can consistently do it through September. That would be six more times. If i can do that plus a few other quality rides every week then the shape should be decent for the Little Sugar mountain bike race in October.

Bicycle races!

Three Bike Rides

Today is August 11 2025 and i rode my bike last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Friday - Short indoor trainer ride, watched part of a movie, post stretch with the cat. Can you identify the movie?

Saturday - Short road ride on the mountain bike. 

Sunday - long road ride on the mountain bike. Usually Saturday mornings are my long ride window however on this occasion we had a prior social engagement, but since my wife is the best she allowed a long ride on Sunday afternoon. This will probably be my last long ride before Gravel Worlds on August 23rd. 

Fridays Ride...

Saturdays Ride...

Sundays Ride...

Group Ride

Today is Thursday August 7 2025 and last night i did the Wednesday Group Ride.

It was my best performance yet but i still got dropped less than halfway in.

i consulted some friends and they confirmed that this group ride is indeed a fast group ride. So that makes me feel a little better. Yesterday was my 6th time doing this ride going back to June 26th and after that initial attempt i though i'd improve quickly but that hasn't been the case. i have improved but i'm still getting destroyed each week. 

But that's ok. 

This week Kevin gave me the nice tip of going to the front prior to the climb that always gets me, good advice but i was hesitant so i probably started 2/3 of the way back. We had a big group this week, maybe over 20. After getting dropped i found a guy to ride with, Rick, and we rode at a steady tempo pretty much the rest of the way, i think i did pretty much the full route, with Rick, for the first time.  

i'd like to keep doing this ride through September but after that our household will be fully into school mode (the little man is starting 5th grade on Monday) so taking off each Wednesday evening gets harder. 

If that works out i have 7 more opportunities to do the ride, maybe just maybe i can stay with the group all the way to the end on one of those rides. But thats a big maybe.

Bicycles!

Also, i saw a Lamborghini on my ride home.

52 Miles & 36 miles

Today is Monday August 4th 2025 and i rode my bike last Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday i intended to ride around 75 miles but that was probably unrealistic given my limited ride window so i ended up doing 52 miles.

On Sunday i lucked into a decent ride window in the afternoon and decided to take the Road Bike on the Rocky Route (midtown, downtown, east bottoms, cliff drive, train tracks, broken glass... old school Rocky I Eye of the Tiger training. Yes i know Eye of the Tiger didn't appear until Rocky III. i make the rules here).

Saturday i felt pretty crappy.

Sunday i felt pretty great.

On Sunday's ride i felt like i might have leveled up in fitness. To put that in racing terms i may have advanced to an average cat 5. Sundays ride was also energizing because of the route. i prefer urban riding. Case in point, i rode by Knuckle Heads yesterday around 4 pm and there was a bad a*s blues band rocking out with a guy in the middle of a sick harmonica solo.

You don't get that when you're out at 233rd and Cleveland Ave!

One final note, i plan to make more of an effort to ride clean bicycles. Specifically the drive train. lately i've been thinking about how much harder i'm having to work because my chain and cassette are super dirty. 

Anyway...

Gravel Worlds is in less than 3 weeks!

Saturdays Ride...

Sundays Ride...