The GTDRI Stories: The Aftermath Of The 10th One

I modified an early Jeff Kerkove GTDRI header for the 2016 ride.

 "The GTDRI Stories" is a series telling the history, untold tales, and showing the sights from the run of Guitar Ted Death Ride Invitationals. This series will run on Sundays. Thanks for reading!

The days after the 2015 GTDRI weren't what I was expecting them to be. First off, I did not get that feeling of having overcome the adversity of the previous year. It was a ride. I did it. That was a bit of a letdown. Secondly, I was right back at it with a Geezer Ride, getting ready for Gravel Worlds, and work plus reviewing stuff and writing. Trans Iowa was announced again. Registration and recon needed to happen. My feet were swept away downstream before I had any time to reflect on what had just happened at the GTDRI. 

I did finally realize that we were done with ten of these rides now! Wow! What a decade of gravel grinding! And what we were doing back then was now well on its way to becoming mainstream, if it wasn't that already. It certainly wasn't anything new, yet mainstream cycling media, who had been dismissive of gravel events not just five or six years prior, were now ballyhooing it as the latest, greatest thing in cycling. 

From the 2008 GTDRI

Ten years of Trans Iowa and now ten years of the GTDRI. How long would I keep doing this stuff? In some ways, I thought what I was doing was irrelevant to what was then the current gravel scene. What was happening then, and is still going on, is the corporatization and marketing of "Gravel™" to make money. For many of us who were there ten years before, it was never about the money.

The other thing that was becoming apparent was that former Pro road riders and those "not quite good enough" for the top tier of Pro road racing were infiltrating the bigger gravel events. I remember that I was tabbed to be a part of the 10th running of the DK200 in 2015 where the DK200 put me on a trading card. But that wasn't all. They actually had all the guys and gals on those trading cards stand in a storefront for an hour in case anyone wanted an autograph. Well, all the semi-Pro and Pro male riders ditched out after about 20 minutes. The attitudes they had about the thing were pretty poor, and to me, it was a manifestation of what a lot of the gravel pioneers were afraid of all along. That being that the Pro, semi-Pro riders, and the money they brought, would ruin everything.

But what I did not see coming was that a groundswell of new riders were coming into the sport that weren't caring about racing or making money. They just wanted to have fun, and those people are the ones that are responsible for the current popularity of gravel group rides and events that are more about fun and adventure. 

This would be manifested in the Geezer Rides I was putting on and in the upcoming GTDRI's that will close out this series. There would be four more years of GTDRI's, at least in terms of public ones. Of course, you can probably guess why that was now!

Next: The Long Route Was Chosen