Winning a bike race

A dispatch from The Tour of the Battenkill

Welcome to the slopfest. (Noah Frank)

“Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.” — Fausto Coppi

“Mother nature remains undefeated.” — Unknown

A little over a year ago, I found out about a bike race that sounded like a lot of fun. I’ve never had any desire to race criteriums or “crits,” lap races often around office parks, pancake flat and at high speeds, rife with crashes. No thanks.

I’ve never wanted to do something like Unbound, the 200-mile marathon over chunky Kansas farm roads that is considered to be the Holy Grail of American gravel racing. Sounds miserable.

Fondos are fun. I’ve done a few, now. But I wanted to test myself in a true race, with an honest start and finish line, that was long enough to be a real effort, but not so long as to be completely miserable. Enter: The Tour of the Battenkill.

Part road, part gravel, with three different distances to choose from, it includes both punchy and rolling hills through the farmland of upstate New York. Crucially, though, it contains none of the eternal climbs that only riders a good deal lighter than even my modest weight can really thrive on. With the medio distance clocking in at 45 miles, I figured I could put out a max, 2.5-hour effort — an 18-mile-per-hour average over varied terrain and surfaces, so long as I rode smart and had some help riding in small groups. The winning times each of the prior couple of years were right around, or slightly better than that mark.

As someone who only took up cycling and bought my first road bike in the fall of 2020, I am still a relative novice to the sport. My functional threshold power or FTP, when I first tested it that November, as someone who had fully let my fitness lapse, was a paltry 153. Over two-and-a-half years, I had worked all the way up to close to 250. Still, there are many stronger riders out there. So I say this, something I never expected to be able to think, with full awareness of the factors I couldn’t control: This was a race that, at least in theory, I could win.

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Some context is helpful here. I have entered three “competitive” races, all fondos, all roughly 60 miles/100 kilometers. These are essentially fun rides with race segments included within them. Your place is calculated by your combined time within those segments. Here is how I’ve finished:

• Maryland Medio Fondo, Sept. 2021: 33rd out of 160 overall, 8th out of 31 in my age group

• Asheville Medio Fondo, July 2022: 30th/203, 7th/34

• Maryland Medio Fondo, Sept. 2022: 44th/176, 10th/32

These are not bad finishes. One might even say they’re, yes, pretty good. They’re also a far cry from winning. In my best performance, in Asheville, I was nearly 13 minutes back from the winner (who completed his combined segments in under an hour) and more than 10:30 off the podium. Even within my age group, I was more than 10 minutes off the pace.

Obviously to win any race you need a certain level of fitness. But beyond that, here is the thing about winning bike races that I’ve learned by watching many professional bike races: You need three big things to go right, as well as a bunch of little ones. Especially without the immediate team support that a professional racer has, those three big things are crucial. And really, they’re three things you need not to happen:

• No crashes

• No flat tires

• No mechanical issues

Then, there’s all the little stuff, some of which isn’t even so little. Get your nutrition right (I overdid the caffeine in last year’s Maryland Fondo and suffered nasty cramps). Get your strategy right (I got split off of a strong group by the rider in front of me in Asheville). Get your equipment right. Get a good night’s sleep.

So much of winning is about not losing the race for one reason or another. It’s why, I think, so many professional race winners (especially the non-superstars) carry a look more of disbelief than joy when they cross the line first. So many things have to go right, and so often they don’t. 

When you’re younger, and stronger, and fitness is quicker and easier to achieve, you can overcome some number of those little things, and maybe even one of the big ones, through sheer brute strength and adrenaline. As you get older, the margins get thinner and thinner. All you can do is try to prepare and put yourself in the best possible position.

Preparation

I did two things this winter and spring to try to improve my overall fitness as well as my higher end power, which is definitely my weak point as a latecomer to the sport. I adopted the 80/20 model of riding 80 percent of my time in endurance zones and below, so as to better build my aerobic base and leave myself fresh enough to really max out my harder days. And I started lifting.

I’ve always hated the gym. I still do. It’s a huge mental hurdle to get there. But I knew I’d need some higher end climbing and sprint speed if I ended up in a small group late in the race. And more strength is never a bad thing in your 40s, as resistance training has been proven to be one of the best activities for aging adults.

I’ve also realized that I struggle to eat on the bike. On a casual long ride, I have no problem stopping for a burger or a chicken parmigiana sandwich, so long as I don’t have to suddenly launch into a time trial afterward. But when riding hard, my already temperamental stomach is especially finicky. So, I did my homework on the science of exactly what a body needs to replenish itself during two hours of hard exercise and figured out a way to put it into liquid in a bottle that I could keep on the bike (and that actually tastes good). I call it my X bottle, and I rode with one of it, and one regular water bottle, enough hydration and nutrition to get through 45 miles in cold weather without stopping.

[Two weeks earlier] Leaving D.C. on the way out for a 40+ mile ride, my back tire catches a bad flat. It reseals, eventually, but is very low. Instead of heading home, I decide to push on, to a bike shop along the route. The tire is pretty beat up, but they don’t have spares for the road, 28 millimeter tires I’m running. They do, however, have the 32 mm gravel tires I’d also considered for this race. I decide to make the switch. They may cost me a little top-end speed, but they’ll deliver considerably better traction and cornering in return, especially once I leave the pavement.

Hitting the first section of gravel on my dry recon ride the day before the race, I’m so glad I made the switch. I’ll be even more happy on race day.

Race day

The little things start to go wrong. I’ve forgotten my bike floor pump at my dad’s house, where I filled my tires the prior day. Thankfully, I’m able to borrow one from the guys who park next to me at the fairgrounds from which the race begins and ends. 

As I ride toward the start line to get warmed up, my bike, which has electronic shifting, won’t shift up in gears. The batteries on the derailleurs are fully charged. I try again. Nothing.

[Three weeks earlier] I’m aiming for my longest training ride, a 100+ mile trek out to the end of the W&OD trail, which is nearly in West Virginia, and back. But suddenly, my bike won’t shift down in gears. I’m stuck in a spinny, climbing gear. My paddle shifter has died. I research on the side of the trail and realize I need a C2032 battery to replace it. I slow-peddle my way to a nearby CVS, managing to do the repair on the fly. I no longer have time to complete that long training ride. But I bought a two-pack of batteries — you never know when the other shifter might die.

The other shifter is dead. Also, it has started to rain, hard. I pull up to the medic shack and convince them to let me inside to make the battery swap somewhere dry, praying that the spare is still where I left it, in my bike bag. I will literally not be able to race without it. It’s there. A crisis I hadn’t even considered is averted.

The three different races — the 75-mile Gran, the 24-mile Piccolo, and my 45-mile Medio — are originally scheduled to be spaced out, with the medio taking off last, at 11:15 a.m. The week of the race, the organizers change the schedule. The Gran leaves at 9, the Medio 9:30, the Piccolo 10. I’m sure there are practical reasons for this, but it ends up causing plenty of confusion later.

The race

Starting line: A group of fewer than 10 of us start out front, as part of the “competitive start.” I’m most happy to be out of the fray of a pack start of riders of different abilities, in the wet, with a couple 90-degree corners in the opening few hundred yards.

Mile 2: As we exit a grove of trees, suddenly exposed, we hit a cross-headwind. I duck in behind Nolan, a rider about a decade my junior who I met on the start line, for cover. I’m eating spray off his back wheel. My shoes already have puddles in them.

Mile 3: I look back on a curve to see who is still with us and…nobody is. It’s just us. With 42 miles left. We are riding hard.

Mile 6: I’ve gotten slightly distanced on a couple punchy hills, but fought back onto the wheel on the flats. We’re still going hard — we’ve been averaging 22 mph on the flats — but I’m settling in. If I can hang until the pace settles, we can split the work and stay out front, all I need is…

*clank*

Oh no.

[Four weeks earlier] I’m riding up the hill I’ve probably ridden the most, the Carter Baron exit out of Rock Creek Park. I’m not riding hard, as it’s an easy day. So, despite the relatively shallow pitch of the hill, I drop into my little ring to keep a high cadence. But instead of catching, the chain misses the ring and drops straight against the frame. I’ve never dropped my chain on this bike. It’s a little disconcerting, especially since I wasn’t pushing at all. I can’t pinpoint a reason why it happened. I can only hope it doesn’t happen again.

It’s happened again. I pull over and desperately try to get the chain back on, but have no dexterity through my soaked glove. After a couple failed attempts, I resort to pulling the glove off and laying my bike flat so I can better get at everything. Both chase groups zoom past. Seconds tick in slow motion. I don’t know how long it takes me to finally get going again — probably not more than two minutes — but by the time I do, I’m rattled, slowly grinding up the hill I’ve stopped in the middle of, trying to pull my glove back on as I ride.

I quickly catch the last rider to pass me, but the rest are up the road.

Mile 9: There’s a rider on the side of the road in the first gravel patch. The dusty, rocky trails have turned to flowing mud channels. I am extremely thankful for my tires. I realize the rider is from the Gran fondo, which started 30 minutes before our race. I’m 32 minutes in. He is having a worse day.

Mile 10: After the first gravel sector comes the punchiest hill. My bike is making sounds like a movie villain butcher sharpening his knives on every pedal stroke. My front brake rotor has been knocked slightly off center, and the grime from the gravel sector is scraping the pad. I won’t be sneaking up on anyone. I’m just hoping I stay in one piece for 35 more miles.

Mile 15: The gnarly, early climbs are behind us, but my lower back is totally fried. Months of preparation to try to ride in better position are being flushed away in real time. There’s just no way to get my body into an aero position for the faster stretches, to cut the wind and save some stress on my legs. I know it’s going to be a tough ask to try to bridge the gap to anyone in front of me, unless they hit their own trouble.

Mile 20: We’re past the split for the Gran fondo, and I see a group of riders up the road. As I reach the top of the hill and blow past them I realize…they are Gran riders, they’ve just cut their day short. I haven’t caught anyone in my race. A few miles later, I spot two more riders on a long, steady climb and slowly reel them in. They are also Gran riders. I am deflated.

Mile 35: I’ve been riding alone, other than picking off Piccolo riders, whose shorter course we now once again share. I’m onto the last punchy road climb, 10 miles out. I pass one rider — of course, from another race — spinning in his last gear, and see another walking his bike near the top of the hill. When I finally reach him, he’s still walking it, despite having reached the top.

“You OK?” I ask.

“My rear derailleur snapped off,” he replies, half laughing, as it dangles alongside his frame.

“Oh. Shit.”

I realize that my toes have gone completely numb. Still, he is having a worse day.

Mile 41: I’ve made the turn toward the golf course and the big, final, four-mile loop home. All the elevation gained early in the race means the last 10 miles are a fast finish. I’ve been hammering as best I can, considering I can’t really get in the drops. I still haven’t caught anyone in my race, nor has anyone caught me. I’m now eating up Piccolo riders by the handful as they peddle in.

Mile 45: As I hit the long finishing stretch before the turn into the chute, there’s a rider in the distance. Maybe he’s from my race; maybe I can snag another spot. I put my head down and churn, closing within 10 yards by the time we make the turn, then blasting by him toward the line. But I don’t recognize him, and I don’t need to see his nameplate to know he’s also not in my race.

I finish in an official time of 2 hours, 43 minutes, 27 seconds, well off my goal. Of course, the conditions didn’t help. Neither did the dropped chain, and the resulting 39 miles of solo riding. Despite the folks who cut their various races short and mucked up the preliminary results, I am able to piece together that I’ve crossed the line 7th overall out of 144 finishers (and who knows how many starters). It’s not a win. It’s not a podium. But it was about as well as I could have done, under the circumstances.

My time is just five minutes back of 2nd place overall, but that’s nearly 11 minutes behind Nolan, who smoked all of us. I’m also 3:35 clear of the next rider behind me, truly trapped in no man’s land. Only 10 riders break 2:50:00 for the day. Many more cut the course or DNF.

The aftermath

My bike computer shows nearly 4,000 feet of elevation, a full 1,000 more than the course GPS promised. I feel less bad about my time.

I see people washing their bikes and think back to a moment when I laughed at how ridiculous someone else on the course looked, mud striped up their back, only to realize that I probably looked no different. I took off my helmet and, well…

I realize that I actually did suffer a puncture — four of them. In my hand. From my crank, as I was trying to get my chain back on.

As I wash my bike I am, for the first time all day, cold. Without the effort from the ride to keep me warm, I’m suddenly shivering. The temperature hasn’t cracked 50 all day, though the rain at least stopped at some point along the way.

My shoes, and their Boa dials, are so caked in mud, it takes me five full minutes to loosen them up enough to get them off my feet. When I finally peel them, and my socks, off, I find that the mud has somehow penetrated all the way down to my bare skin. It’s only then that I realize my toes are still numb.

For finishing in the top three in my age group, I receive an unexpected reward — a jug of fresh chocolate milk from the local creamery (the photo at the top of the post).

It’s hard to be too disappointed — everything could have gone far worse. I notched my first ever Top 10, in a field of nearly 150, something there’s no guarantee I’ll ever do again. I podiumed in my age group, another first. And yet.

“Next year!” one of my friends texts.

Probably not. But, if I can recruit a couple friends to come with, and I can stay healthy, and I can get a little more fit, and if none of the big things go wrong, and if most of the little things go right…you never know.