Gravel Grinder History With Guitar Ted is a series of posts covering the early days of gravel grinding, racing, and tech which helped build and make gravel riding the hottest form of cycling in the 2020's. Many of these articles were first published on my "Gravel Grinder News" blog which started in late 2008.
In today's post you will read a race report by Matt "MG" Gersib who wrote "Answering The Call..." for Gravel Grinder News in 2013. This is a race report for the event then called the Dirty Kanza 200. (Now Unbound Gravel) In it you will learn much about how gravel events once were run. Pay specific attention to details like navigation, the names of people Matt thought were at the top of the heap in gravel racing, and to what some of the fears of gravel racers were concerning growth.
I've lightly edited this post (removing dead links mostly, spiffing up the images) and I have added a few notes to clarify things for today's readers, but otherwise this is how this post appeared on June 11th, 2013. Enjoy!
Answering the Call…
by Matt Gersib
Images by Cornbread, Kyle Thompson, Dave Mable, and MG
Gravel grinding is getting pretty big in the Midwest, as evidenced by the nearly 1,000 combined entrants in the 2013 Dirty Kanza 200, “Half-Pint” 100-miler, and 20- or 50-mile “DK-Lite” fun rides. Held at the doorstep of the Kansas Flint Hills in the college town of Emporia, Kansas, the Dirty Kanza was first run in 2006. Since then, the event has grown from just a few dozen participants that first year to become one of, if not the, largest gravel grinder in North America.
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| Since 2010, the Dirty Kanza 200 has started and finished in-front of the
historic Granada Theater in downtown Emporia. Photo: Cornbread (Cory Godfrey) |
I wasn’t one of the doubters, however, and whenever asked, I told them that I thought 200 miles was a lot of space, and that there would be plenty of room for everyone to ride. I even suggested there would be times when we’d feel really alone out there, even with all the people we knew were on-course with us.
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| Riders assemble prior to the 6:00a.m. start. Photo: Cornbread (Corey Godfrey) |
Fast forward to race day and while the start line was an awesome
spectacle, it was really the only time (on the bike) that I felt like it
was any different than the Dirty Kanza 200s that had come before.
Perhaps the overall level of the field was a bit higher overall due to
the increased numbers, but the quality riders only enhanced the quality
of the event. I mean, who doesn’t want to go to a race and meet Tour
Divide champion, Jay Petervary, the “Queen of Pain”, Rebecca Rusch, and a
number of other cycling legends?
I knew that bettering, or even matching my personal best DK200 placing
(fifth overall in 2008) would be extremely tough as I surveyed the
riders on the start line. And with my recent failure at Trans Iowa fresh
in the back of my mind, I wasn’t willing to risk going too hard in the
front 100-miles of the race in a vain attempt to stay near the front.
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| Racers roll-out onto the course just after the start of the 2013 Dirty Kanza 200. Photo: Kyle Thompson |
At one point during the first leg, I even thought I might have been
going too easy, but I stopped thinking that after stopping to help
Specialized rider, Garth Prosser (eventual 7th place overall
finisher) with a flat rear tire. Garth offered to pull me into
checkpoint one in return for stopping to help, but was clearly riding
much stronger than I. It was a struggle simply to hold his wheel, so I
let him go.
His strength gave me a glimpse into my own mortality if I chose to play
with fire, so it was a good exercise, but it reminded me that I needed
to pay attention to my game plan. I backed off and resumed a
comfortable, but reasonably fast pace.
Checkpoint one came at about mile 50, and my wife Laura was amazing at
taking care of everything I needed, often before I knew I needed it.
“You aren’t drinking enough,” she said to me as she topped my bottles off.
“It’s OK sweetheart,” I replied. “It’s not hot and I’ll be drinking a lot more on this leg, so you won’t be telling me that when I see you in 50-miles.”
We both laughed as I finished the smoothie I was drinking. It was just a
couple more minutes and I was back out on the course, on the second
50-mile segment. As I rode away from the checkpoint, I thought to
myself, “this is where the fun starts!”
I was thinking sarcastically, of course, as I knew that there would be a
lot of head wind in the next 100-miles. Unfortunately for all of us on
this day, the head wind was significant. Combine that with the fact that
I was once again experiencing pain in my right knee (similar to what I
experienced at Trans Iowa), and it made for some times of fairly slow
going.
And then I missed a turn and rode a total of six miles off-course…
I realized the error in my ways when I saw corner markers set into a
corner, only they were 180-degrees opposite from their standard
orientation… “What is this?” I thought to myself. (Editor's Note: The DK200 used "flags" to mark corners in the early years of the event. If you saw a flag (just a surveyor's pole with a Hi-Viz ribbon flying from it like a streamer), on your right, you then looked down the intersection each way to see where another flag like it was. If it was seen on the right side of the road in any direction from the intersection, it indicated which way to turn. In this instance Matt noted the flags were on the left side of the road, indicating he had come up on another portion of the course from the wrong direction.)
It was an earlier section of the course (ahead of checkpoint 1) that,
after missing the corner I was supposed to take, I’d ridden up to. As I
perused my course map in an attempt to locate myself, two riders
approached from the opposite direction and asked if I needed help. I
politely declined and wished them good luck on their ride.
Surveying the map, I deduced that while I wasn’t exactly sure of my
location (the location wasn’t marked on the map I was reading – for
segment two), turning around was my best option and hope for getting
back on-course as quickly as possible. As it turns out, I rode for three
miles before I came upon the turn I’d missed, which was right before a
water crossing in the road (located after the corner). I’d gotten so
focused on the water crossing that I didn’t even see the turn markers
(or the road itself, for that matter). I was super focused-in on
figuring out if the water could be ridden, and if so, which line I
needed to take.
Since the water crossing was about 50 yards long (my guess, no ruler
in-hand), it required considerable concentration. Oh, and yes, I was
riding alone. So much for the theory that it’d be “too crowded” out on the road! HA!
The head wind turned oppressive around mile 75, and I went into energy
conservation mode. That said, the gnarly Flint Hills terrain combined
with the wind to take it out of me from mile 75 to 100. I came into the
second checkpoint eager to tear into the Valentino’s pizza we’d brought
from Lincoln in the cooler. It actually made me go faster coming into
the checkpoint, but coming into the Salsa tent to receive my new map and
check-in, the ladies excitedly exclaimed as I rode up:
“Number 59… There he is. Are you Matthew?”
“Ummm. I think so,” I think I uttered.
“Laura’s car broke down on the highway…”
(Thinking to myself “Holy Shiiiii”)
“…but she did send this Monster and water for you, and we have some food we’d be happy to give you.”
“Ummmmmmm…..”
Cue the appearance of Joe Reed, the checkpoint coordinator and my host for the weekend. “Matt, why don’t you sit down here and we’ll just take care of you,” he said. “No problem.”
Joe and I sat down and chatted while one of the checkpoint angels,
Ingrid, offered up some of the summer sausage and Colby Jack cheese she
had in her cooler. Meat and cheese during a bike race? I’m from Nebraska
– bring it on! Thank you Ingrid – you single handedly saved my 2013
Dirty Kanza. For while that might not have been the pizza I was
expecting, it was exactly what I needed.
Thank you to everyone at checkpoint two – Amanda, Amanda, Jen, Ingrid,
Joe and everyone else involved with the stop. Without your generous
support, I wouldn’t have been able to continue, but after leaving the
checkpoint, I had no choice but to finish. You all were key to my
finish. Thank you doesn’t seem like enough.
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| Still smiling in the first 100 miles of the event. Photo: Eric Benjamin |
About four miles into the leg, three riders pulled up on me – Salsa’s Tim Ek, and the Cycle Works/Moose’s Tooth duo of Scott Bigelow and James Blake. All were looking strong and for a minute I upped my tempo to ride with them. It was at about this time that the Salsa-sponsored film crew pulled up in a Jeep and, almost as if on cue, Eki raised the pace about five miles per hour. All of the sudden we were doing 23 mph…
Homie wasn’t playin’ that, so I dialed it back to a more reasonable pace for my legs and watched Eki quickly gain a hill on me as he picked off rider-after-rider for the camera. Meanwhile, I tore into a package of Honey Stinger drops with the abandon of a raging hyena. That cherry cola flavor is to die for and I hadn’t gotten many carbs during my stop at checkpoint two, so I had a bit of a hankerin’.
So, here’s where the DK200 gets a little bleak, as the turn northward into the wind was a doozy. As we rode among the nodding donkeys in the oil fields of the Flint Hills, the sparse terrain provided little respite from the sustained 20+ mph northwest winds. The same winds we’d flown on in the earlier stages of the event were the same ones that now forced my speed below ten miles per hour regularly.
Each ten miles of the leg seemed magnified by the wind-fueled slowness. It didn’t help that my knee was giving me consistent shooting pains, which concerned me, but I decided were something I just had to live with. “Grin and bear it,” I thought to myself as I pedaled through the veil of pain.
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| Image: Cornbread (Corey Godfrey) |
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| MG at Checkpoint #3 |
I rode into the third checkpoint with a gentleman from Washington – near Olympia. Since my parents and sister’s family live in Oly, we quickly struck up some good conversation that at some point turned to the calamity with our car. He quickly offered to let me sag out of his support car, driven by his wife. But as we rode into the checkpoint and received our new maps, who was the first person I saw? It was my beautiful wife, Laura. She’d gotten the Subaru towed to Emporia, rented a car and was back out to support me. What an awesome wife and an incredible person!
I was so overjoyed to see Laura that I immediately and completely
forgot my earlier plans, and immediately left for the rental car (and
our cooler with the pizza) with Laura. Ironically, after the stop, I saw
the same rider back out on-course and he said “I never saw you after we
got our maps,” so I apologetically told him about finding Laura at the
checkpoint and how overcome I was with joy in seeing her. About then, my
knee started locking up and I had to stop to stretch it for a bit.
As I rejoined the race, two riders approached – singlespeed rider, PA
single speeder, Mark Elsasser and Kansas cycling icon, Keith Walberg. It
was great to ride with these two guys, if for too short a time, as
after ten or so more miles I again had to stop and stretch my tightening
IT band. In retrospect, when I stopped, I should have tried raising my
saddle 3-4 millimeters, as that may have helped the situation, but I
didn’t have the presence of mind at that point in the event to think of
it. Hindsight is 20-20 however, so I’ll save that one for future
reference.
The final 20 miles of the race were largely with the wind, as we rode
familiar roads through the small town of Americus and into Emporia. The
sun set as I rolled through Americus, dashing my hopes of scoring one of
the limited edition prints that were being given to those who finished
before sunset, but I decided it didn’t matter and pushed to the finish
with a steeled resolve to catch as many racers in-front of me as
possible before the line.
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| Thumbs-up at the finish. Photo: Eric Benjamin |
I ended up finishing 86th overall (32nd veteran), with a course time of 15 hours and 25 minutes.
It wasn’t my fastest Dirty Kanza 200, but given the challenges we had
during the race, I was happy with the result and feel like it’s due to
the work of a lot of folks, some of whom I’ll never be able to thank.
But I’ll try, and the first person I’d like to thank is my incredible
wife, Laura. I don’t know who had it harder on race day, but she came
through it and was the rock I needed when I needed her. Thank You! And
to everyone involved with the Dirty Kanza 200 – Jim, Kristi, Tim, and
everyone at the checkpoints – Thank You all! And thanks to our host for
the weekend, Joe Reed – an awesome person and good friend. And finally,
thanks to Marty Larson and Sam Alison at Singular Cycles, and Rob
Versteegh at Oakley for their support in 2013!
See you down the road!
What a great race report! Thanks again, Matt. This was an excellent look at what events were like a mere decade and a little more ago. There were a lot of things yet to be figured out then. Most riders were on cyclo - cross, mountain bikes, or some cobbled together rig. Most were not running tubeless yet. There were no GPS computers to use for turn prompts or massive roadside hand-ups for the fast guys.
But you can also see the beginnings of what the Dirty Kanza event brought to gravel. The fancy finish line chute, proper timing, and promoting the event th4rough the invitation to elite athletes (Jay Petervary, Rebecca Rusch). The popularity of this event skyrocketed after 2013.
I hope you enjoyed this fascinating look back at gravel racing.
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