Minus Ten Review -36

"Team Stoopid" won!

Ten years ago on the blog I was talking about the Labor Day weekend win I had with "Team Stoopid". It was a four man, single speed, rigid fork riding team. I had quite the spectacular "dismount" during this event. One of my better crashes, actually.

There was a left hander, a pretty sharp one, that came after a quick downhill. If you over-cooked the turn, there was a precipitous drop of probably 20-25 feet. Well, I over-cooked the turn and found myself in mid-air with the prospects of a nasty drop and certain injury. I managed to hook a small tree with my right arm and I spun, pole dancer style, all the way to the bottom hooked to the tree by the crook of my arm only. It left a nasty rash, but I landed safely on the ground on my two feet.

That was probably the highlight of my miserably slow two laps. I was woefully over-geared for that steep of a course, but live and learn! The opportunity to experience a 24Hr race weekend, even though we only did 12 hours, was really cool. It remains my only experience with that sort of off road racing.

The other thing that was cool was that I got to spend a weekend with three others that I haven't had the opportunity to spend anytime with ever since. It was an odd arrangement and the timing of the team coming together was maybe a cosmic oddity. I don't know, but I won't soon forget that experience or the time spent with those men.

Me heading out for a lap for "Team Stoopid".

In other news from a decade ago this week, I was talking about the mythical "Gravel Triple Crown". This is interesting now from the standpoint of this past spring's Trans Iowa winner, Dan Hughes, claiming the "Triple Crown" in his blog report for the event. To get some perspective on this, I am going to refer to my writing about the "Triple Crown" idea here:

"Word is perculating (sic) that it (the Triple Crown's third event) might be in Nebraska. We'll see, but this is an idea that hatched not long after Jeff and I came out with Trans Iowa V1. We'll see if there is enough enthusiasm to carry the day."

So, as can be seen, a "Triple Crown" of gravel idea was being discussed "shortly after" T.I.v1 was announced. This was likely in 2005 or so when, as I recall, it was Jim Cummins of the DK200 who bandied the idea about and was asking Jeff and I what we thought about doing such a thing. As I recall, we weren't too hot on the idea of getting involved in a "series", which is how we were interpreting the idea. We were still finding our way, as far as how this gravel road racing idea would pan out, and we wanted freedom to tweak on our event as we saw fit. A series, or any link to a Triple Crown, would mean some sort of guidelines and rules to make it cohesive and we didn't think it was going to be a possibility without severely compromising our visions.

So, here a couple of years later the idea was brought up again as the Lincoln guys were developing their idea for the "Good Life Gravel Adventure" which became "Gravel Worlds" a few years later. The idea never came to any "official" agreement between the DK200, Trans Iowa, and Gravel Worlds folks, so it remained a curious idea at best. As far as I ever knew, it never even reached a point beyond some cursory discussions among the promoters.

Dan Hughes probably heard about this from talk in the early days of the DK200, I don't know, but that is completely plausible. However he came across the idea, it was never anything serious and the idea never got off the ground. Now I see folks on social media urging Allison Tetrick, who has won Gravel Worlds and the Dirty Kanza 200 Women's titles, to come to T.I. to try for the women's mythical triple crown. But be assured that even if she does sign up, and by chance happens to win the Women's category, it will be only an idea that resides with some of the riders. Definitely not an official crown.