Immigrants from the Mundane - The Spinistry 24-hour gravel race
I had very measured expectations for Spinistry’s 24-hour gravel race last weekend. It wasn’t a race that I had totally rested up for since I went out the Tuesday before and rode my guts out with the A group in Waco, getting my tookus handed to me in the process. It turns out there is a reason why this appears to be the only 24-hour gravel race we know of. 24-hour races on smooth roads are challenging enough, so you want to run one on gravel? Brutal. I figured I’d put in a good effort but give myself permission to stop short of really turning myself wrongside out, since I’ll be able to go do a big, as yet undermined bikepacking trip in about three weeks and I want to be well recovered for that.
I checked the weather and drove up to the 4R Winery near
Muenster (north of Dallas) and set up my old tent in the drizzling rain. After
walking around and greeting old friends, making new ones, and prepping my gear
for the next morning’s 9 a.m. start, I dragged my lawn chair over to a group of
guys circled up in the gathering darkness chatting about their plans for the
next day, where they had ridden before, making connections over mutual acquaintances
that were regulars at these kinds of races. I was struck by how international
our little group was. I’ve lived and worked in Chile and teach Spanish.
Roberto is from Brazil, Garret from South Africa, and Peter from what was called Slovakia when he left. In a sense, we were all immigrants from the
mundane, voluntarily foregoing a chill weekend at home for what was to be a devastatingly
hard day (the full 24-hour version) on the bike.
The first 126 miles were over a 2-loop course that passed
through Saint Jo, a little town to which I have some vague ancestral connection. The course took me
past sprawling ranch lands and wildflowers. There was very little traffic,
almost no cell signal, and very few people, although in the span of a couple of
ours I passed mounted cowboys who looked like they had just ridden out of a Remington
painting and was passed by a carload of screaming high school girls, one of
whom stood out of the sunroof and flashed me in the style of a Mardi Gras
parade.
I rode and paced myself very well the first 150 miles,
staying on top of my calorie and hydration requirements and taking care to keep
my heartrate well down within endurance range. Darkness brought plummeting
temperatures and a switch to a part of the course comprised of short, punchy
hills. In the wee hours of the morning near the end of a lap, my nearly new
bike computer’s GPS stopped working at 194.6 miles. The MPH field was empty,
and the map screen was frozen in place. I pedaled into the transition area/campsite
and tried to troubleshoot it, eventually saving the ride, shutting down and
restarting the device. The computer was working again, but in the intervening
time of standing around I had gotten very cold. During the next lap I was
shivering and having a hard time focusing and staying awake on the bike. When I
got back to transition at about 6 a.m. I decided to try to get warm and get a
little sleep, which effectively ended my race at about 208 miles and a final
standing of 4th place. I was disappointed at the 3 hours left on the
table but satisfied with the solid amount of work I had put in which will make
me stronger after I recover in a couple of weeks.
I loaded up the truck for the drive home and soon passed some
bigger towns and the inevitable Whataburger[1].
Let me tell you, there’s a way that a honey butter chicken biscuit tastes after
a night like that that it doesn’t taste any other time. You can tell that the
honey and butter have been mixed before being applied to the biscuit and the
proportions have been precisely and lovingly measured. You can imagine that the
chicken that possessed that breast may have even been happy to be sacrificed for so
noble a cause as to be fed to you in your hour of famelic hunger. And the sleep you get
when you get home? It is profound and impenetrable enough to be oblivious to
the anxious dreams that would parade past your conscience on any other night.
I don’t talk about my cycling events in the classroom. I don’t
feel like I have the right to take up valuable class time with my personal
exploits, and I don’t want to make the students feel
like they have to feign interest in what I do to ingratiate themselves. But
when I start class on a Monday morning after an epic race weekend like that and
go around the room and ask, ¿Cómo estás? to several students and one of them inevitably
says, “Estoy cansada” (I´m tired), I just smile and say, “Yo también” (me too).
[1] My
mother told me that when she was pregnant with me, she had recurrent cravings
for Whataburger. Does that mean that Whataburger is in my DNA or part of the
marrow of my bones? I think so.
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