I have not participated in an official running event in nearly a year. That is a long hiatus for me. I don’t do a ton of races but usually at least a few spread out across the seasons.

I have been craving some type of formal event to participate in. But I am have one big race on my calendar for late spring and that is my A race for the year. The only goal is get to that race healthy. Don’t give myself any reason to do something dumb which is more likely to happen in a race environment. So no running races until I get past that event.

But last year I road my first gravel bike event and despite how unbelievably hard it was I really had fun. The Steuben Strong Independent Cycling group has a series of races they put on over the course of each year. Last year I competed in the last event of the season. This year I had been keeping my eye on the first race of the season.

Last year I had all summer to train and get ready for a long race. This year I only did a modest amount of cycling over the winter. All of it was on my bike trainer. But I did get out for one nice gravel bike ride in early spring when we had a surprisingly warm day. I road out and back on the Catherine Valley Trail.

So I was thinking of taking on the first race of the season which is their shortest of the year at 17 miles. They are kind enough to structure their race series two the events get longer as the year goes on and you have more time to train.

My one gravel ride of the year was that long at least. I didn’t have any of the elevation changes that this course would have, but I through I could mostly manage. There was one climb of around 800 ft. that I thought I might be able to muscle up and get over. (Spoiler Alert. I could not.)

So as has been the case for most of spring, after a series of nice days in mid April it began to turn cold again. The forecast for the race was going to be a cold day. If not for my experience riding around all the Finger Lakes last year, where we endured some cold and rainy weather, I might have bailed on the race. I had appropriate gear to get me through the cold weather and the fact that it was a gravel bike race made the rain and snow potential much less off an issue than it would be if was a road bike event. Did I mention that. Yeah, I said snow.

The location of the event was almost an hour and a half away. As I drove it snowed on and off almost the entire time. It wasn’t sticking to the paved roads, but was sticking more and more to the hillsides as I went north. I had no idea what that meant for dirt and gravel surfaces. This was all new to me.

Sure enough when I arrived at the starting location the surrounding scenery was dressed in snow. It did not appear to have coated the roads at least not at the start line. I got dressed and lined up for the start.

The last race I participated in had only certain segments where riders were timed. However, this event was m or elite standard running races I was used to. Riders would be timed on the total time it took them to ride the course.

Instead of everyone starting at the same time each rider started separately with a delay between each person. This allowed us to in theory have the slower riders go first and fast riders last so we could all finish closer together. I made sure I was among the first few to start. I knew I would finish but I had no idea how long it would take.

And of course like most race events I seem to get myself into the course started off with a hill. No warm up. Just start climbing. Good news was it helped me to stay warm, because despite my warm weather gear I was still cold while in motion on the bike.

Getting warmed up had its drawbacks though. I am a heavy sweater. I get drenched no matter what the weather is like if I am exerting myself. So once I started getting sweaty every gust of wind was colder.

The fact of getting warmed up also had an unexpected effect. I like to ride with more wrap around style glasses to keep debris etc. out of my eyes even if it is not sunny. They do a good job of keeping stuff out but they also hold heat in. This created a big temperature differential between the inside of my glasses and the outside air. So my glasses were pretty foggy most of the race. There were times where I felt like a knight from mid-evil times riding into battle with the visor of my helmet closed over my face. I was able to pull glasses forewarn on my nose enough to create a slit to see through between the top of my glasses and my helmet. I could look down through my glasses to see close up detail well enough, but if I needed to look out ahead of me to see what was coming I needed the clear vision of this slit in my helm. That was a very unexpected occurrence.

I really liked the course. There as this one really long downhill. Normally I am a fan of downhills ion all things. But in this cold wintry weather I was quite chilled. I am not skilled or experienced enough on my bike to take the downhill full speed and get through it as fast as I could. But I was going quite fast enough and it was cold. Exact speed not reported to save my wife from having a heart attack. I would love to ride that section again in better weather.

Eventually we got to the one big climb I was expecting. It was about 2/3 the way into the course. And it was one of those hills that always felt like it was just about to be over. But never actually ended. AS I finally got near the top I lost focus a little and got off on the edge of the road into some thicker gravel and almost dumped myself going very slow. And I looked ahead and noticed a fellow biker and gotten off his bike. And was walking it up the hill. I decided that was as good a sign as I needed to do the same. I dismounted and walked the rest of the way up the hill. Could I have grinded it out and gotten up the hill on my bike? Maybe. If the weather was better I might have felt more like trying, but I was kinda over it in the moment.

The last part of the course was a lot of downhill which I really enjoyed and then a nice solid downhill almost right to the finish line. I really liked this course and would definitely come back and ride it again sometime just for fun. It was all just normal dirt country roads. Nothing too steep no terrain too technical. It was a really fun ride. And I was happy with my performance. I actually did not come in last as I insisted I would when talking to fellow riders at the start line.

Despite the cold it was a really cool experience to ride around and see the wintery landscape. The snow made everything a little extra special and beautiful. I was a little disappointed, because I had planned to film my ride with my GoPro, but I managed to forget to bring the correct Alan wrench I needed to attach the camera to my bike. I would have really liked to have the images to remember the ride. There was this really beautiful section where the road was lined on both sides with beautiful tall pine trees covered in snow. It would have been nice to record the ride through there.

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