Signing up for a gravel road race in April in Michigan, you never know what you\u2019re gonna get. The weather turned out to be pretty decent, me on the other hand\u2026 not so much. I had been battling a cold for a couple weeks before the race (4\/6), it was still lingering the day of and to top it off I woke up with a headache and nauseous.<\/p>\n
I stayed in a hotel in Grand Rapids and signed up for the race early enough to get a discount on the race fees, there was no way I wasn\u2019t at least attempting to do the race. A quick stop for a banana and some gas for the truck and I was off to find the start line.<\/p>\n
Without a steady data signal on my phone and not getting directions before I left, I drove around for awhile before I finally found registration and a place to park. Not knowing what the weather was going to be like, I packed all my cycling gear. After a quick trip to get my race number, I decided on bibs, tech shirt, shoe covers, tights, wind shell jacket, winter cycling gloves, and my buff. It was a little chilly before the race started, but I wasn\u2019t too cold once we got rolling.<\/p>\n
The race start had three waves and I was in the second. The first wave was called up and the second wavers filled in behind, I looked around and saw quite a few \u201cWave 2\u201ds around me and thought I was good. Well, the folks in wave three were anxious to get going and lined up directly behind the first wave. When the gun went off for my wave, I had a hard time navigating through the crowd\u2026 I wasn\u2019t the only one :(. <\/p>\n
Being on a singlespeed, I had hoped to find a peleton to ride with, but that idea quickly faded after the botched start. Nobody likes a wheel-sucker, but that was the only way I was getting through the race. I spent most of my time behind a lady with a sweet LeMond road bike (with surprisingly narrow tires). Without her, I\u2019m not sure I would have finished the race\u2026 definitely want to do this race again, maybe the fall race next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Signing up for a gravel road race in April in Michigan, you never know what you\u2019re gonna get. The weather turned out to be pretty decent, me on the other hand\u2026 not so much. I had been battling a cold for a couple weeks before the race (4\/6), it was still lingering the day of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}