“I’ll get to it when I have time.”
That’s what I’ve been telling myself for months now about writing an update of how The Gravel Life (TGL) is going. Life has been unrelenting, though, as I’ve explained in an instagram post recently. Between 2 kids under 5, a new job as a coach with Team EF Coaching, bike work, and training the house down, there hasn’t been much opportunity to sit at the computer and let the words flow.
I finally got some time while waiting for my return flight from the UCI Gravel Series race in Worthersee, Austria, though, so here’s a recap of the season so far….
I’ve been trusting the process when it comes to training—with a later start in the year and different demands from the racing, it didn’t make sense to keep doing the same as I had been for a traditional road season. That’s meant less intensity and more volume—lots of bike riding! I nearly hit 300 hours for the year when March ended. I’ve been searching for the balance between road, gravel, and mountain biking so that the fatigue is manageable, I get the training and skills work I need, but continue to have fun.
The season really kicked off in Girona in February with the Santa Vall stage race, which coincided with the PAS Racing team camp. I elected to sleep at home throughout the block so that I could help with family life, although many days I wasn’t at home nearly at all.
Starting the Santa Vall race, I had a lot of question marks to answer…. Had I made the right equipment choices? Was my training on track? Could I compete in a pretty stacked field? The races were short by gravel standards, so they were very explosive. Starting with a mass-start hill climb, we wasted no time in blowing away the cobwebs. Payson McElveen posted his video of the entire race with excellent commentary, you should give it a watch! I make a few appearances, but spent most of the race just behind Payson. I was very happy with how well it went—that climb is brutal and I expected to lose more than 30 seconds to the winner!
The second stage was unlike anything I’d ever done…basically mass-start time trials for 2 segments of a lap. There was a lot of gamesmanship going on with where riders started in the group, but I opted to keep things simple and race hard at the front to force splits behind. It was working well until I had 2 mechanicals. Thankfully my legs were good enough to limit the time losses, but I could have done better that day.
The final stage was traditional bike race, but fast and furious and under 4 hours. I made a calculated gamble with my hydration strategy, but such plans only work if you actually catch the bottle in the feed zone. My legs weren’t awesome, so I missed the split in the middle of the stage on the big climb, but I learned a valuable gravel lesson to always keep fighting—it just might come back together! I even managed to put in a good attack late in the race, but after being out there alone for 10 minutes they finally clawed me back. Then I was fairly well positioned going into the sprint, but the cramps that set in meant I finished at the back of our group. My consistency over the weekend, though, landed me in 4th place overall, a solid start to the Gravel Earth Series.
That was 6 weeks ago, though! Since then, I’ve done a ton of training, but things got challenging. Over the past few years, I’ve had on/off neck pain, usually a few times a year. It was never terrible, but annoying and could be helped by massage and treatment. I attributed it to sleeping weird or to how much time I spent on my TT bike. Recently the pain became more frequent and more uncomfortable, so I’ve been spending more time at the physiotherapist to get it corrected. Basically, the training camp crash in 2016 resulted in a lot of muscle imbalances in my neck and shoulder, and with treatment and corrective exercises I got those imbalances 90% corrected. The remaining 10%, after 8 years, has resulted in collarbones that don’t sit evenly and a slightly twisted ribcage, which is pinching at the base of my neck. So now my daily routine involves some stretches and exercises, which are steadily improving the discomfort.
It was tough to do such a huge training block where I had one pain-free hour of riding each day before my neck started to bother me, especially in a week where I rode for nearly 33 hours, but I pushed through knowing that I needed the training to be ready for my big goals just a couple of months away.
All of the sudden it was time to fly to Austria for the first UCI Gravel Series race at Worthersee Lake. I wasn’t sure it was the best race for me, but I want to try different types of races this year to see what I enjoy and do well at. As always, Austria was beautiful and we enjoyed riding there, but it was quickly clear that the course didn’t hit my strong points. The few climbs that were on the lap were short and punchy, and the rest was like a crit course. Only half of the course was unpaved, and barely a couple of kilometers truly favored a road bike over a gravel bike. To give me more self-doubt, I didn’t have a very big gear on my bike for the high speeds we’d see.
It was nice to be with my PAS Racing teammates at an airbnb near the course, as the vibe was very relaxed while still focused on doing our best. The morning of the race, we rolled easily to the start as the day quickly warmed up—on track for a heat record later in the afternoon. I made the conservative plan of carrying everything I usually would in the event of a puncture or mechanical, but the UCI style of racing led most guys to go bare-bones, with just a single plug kit and CO2. We would go through a couple of feed zones each lap, but I’m a thirsty fella and didn’t want to overburden our volunteer helpers, so I raced with my Salomon pack. It gave me a better chance staying hydrated, but also meant I was significantly heavier than most of my competitors.
The race was wildly fast from the start, which I expected with half of the front row on road bikes, and nearly 10 paved kilometers before we touched real dirt. I couldn’t quite put it together to be in position at the right time, just getting swarmed before the key moments each lap. My legs were okay, but I had to spend a lot of energy each lap chasing back after every split. After 2 laps, my engine room shut down completely. I still had plenty of energy, but my heart rate was very high and I couldn’t push at all. In hindsight, that’s exactly when the temperature got up above anything we’ve even seen in Girona yet this year. I was cooked. I got caught by another chase group after pedaling around for a while, and rode with them until the final climb. In the end, I finished 53rd, 12 minutes down on the winner (and former HPH teammate Sebastian Schoenberger), who crushed the course on his aero road bike (the FELT AR!) with big road tires….
The race didn’t go my way, but it was good training (and good heat training), and I’m further refining the type of race I want to target in the future. Honestly, right now I doubt I’ll do too many of the high-speed mixed-surface races like this, but the event was very well organized and a lot of fun, so I’m not too disappointed. I’m the kind of oddball that much prefers the 13 hour effort of the Traka 360, which is just a couple of weeks away!
Next, though, is La Indomable in southern Spain, and we’ll road-trip there as a family—the girls’ first long trip in the van. We’re sure to make some memories!