Almanzo #Royal162 2013.

The brainchild of a very passionate bloke, Chris Skogen, the @Almanzo100 ‘Royal 162′ came onto my radar as it was being run last year, and immediately went on my calendar of ‘must do’ rides for 2013.

Three of us flew out of Los Angeles (@GoldenSaddle #Mudfoot) and met up with former Trans-Iowa winner, and latest edition to the TwinSix Cyclocross team Eric Brunt.

0700. Saturday. May 18th. After we had sung a happy belated birthday to Almanzo founder Chris’ son, we rolled out from the Royal162 start-line in Spring Valley, MN.

Aside from Eric, who had a good chance of the overall win, we’d planned on riding at ‘tourist’ pace, taking in the scenery, quaffing any and all available ‘hand-ups’ and shooting  photos;  but as the field rapidly split we caught ‘gravel fever’ and found ourselves in the lead group unable to dial back the testosterone.

This madness went on, with us all hammering away for a good couple of hours until our small group of 10-12 or so riders hit the first river crossing at a washed out bridge.

We called a nature break and waded through the water. I unfortunately made the mistake of relieving myself after the crossing, and as I topped a small climb above the river the ‘soft pedaling’ (cough-bullshit-cough) obviously hadn’t been soft enough and a group had opened up a rather large gap, with two of my boys in it. I spent the next hour killing myself trying to bridge the gap — Let me interject here that I had no delusions about racing the whole 160 miles, I just wasn’t in that kind of shape,  but I  was really having a blast racing on gravel for the first time — For what seemed an eternity I could see my two Mudfoot mates Dean and Eric, and a chap call Charles from (@angrycatfish) cruelly yo-yo-ing a quarter of a mile ahead of me. With my heart rate banging harder than the Wu-Tang in my ear-buds I finally bridged up to them on a short sharp shock of a climb.

I don’t quite know what happened over the next few minutes but by the time I looked up again my boys had gapped Charles and myself, a gap we would never close, because a few miles down the road Charles hit a pot-hole, and then the deck HARD, breaking a rib.

Within 5 minutes ‘The Gravel Lord’ Corey “Cornbread” Godfrey and our mate Kyle – who had hung back taking photos – rode up on us. Cory took over the EMT as Kyle and I rode on to Harmony to call for help — On a visit to @angrycatfish the next day I learned that Charles was out at a concert Saturday night… So I’m taking that to mean he’s doing OK.

While refueling in Harmony we were joined by another group of riders and the pace ramped up again for the next couple of hours through the amazing scenery and endless gravel rollers.

At some point I lost Kyle to a photo-op, and found Dean who had made the earlier break. We rolled towards the promise of a beer at ‘Jo’s Longbranch Bar’ over the border in Iowa.

Dean and I chugged beer and split burger n fries, then Kyle resurfaced — he hadn’t even seen our bikes, it was a sign reading ‘RIBS’ that had pulled him into Jo’s. We hung out here for over an hour, chugging on a beers and chatting to a salt-of-the-earth local woman, who regaled us with the legend of their chefs ribs… We could have stayed there all night. I’m sure we’re going back for those ribs sometime in the future!

We eventually dragged our arses back outside, saddled up and set about knocking out the last 60 miles.

*Note. We had somehow talked ourselves into believing that there was only 5000ft of climbing on this ride; this self generated urban myth had been shattered way back along the way. At 7500ft already, we’d been advised that the last 30 miles were, to pardon my canine terminology, ‘an absolute bitch!’ And they were.

At this point the almanzo100 and Royal162 courses had merged. This meant we now had an endless supply of ‘carrots’ on the road to spur us forward.

We somehow got ourselves lost for a few miles, and then we came upon the river crossing detour. Apparently the river was now raging so hard it was too dangerous to cross. We seriously considered just heading that way anyhow, but luckily sanity prevailed.

The last 3 or 4 climbs were brutal, there were streams of people walking their bikes. We rode on, our bikes now all suffering the effects of hours of gravelation-deterioration. Kyle apologized to everyone he passed for the ear crunching sounds of his malcontent bottom bracket.

One last beer, whiskey and water stop later courtesy of TwinSix and we were in the home stretch.

After 10hrs in the saddle and 2hrs in the pub, 159 miles (255km) and 10,400ft (3050m) of climbing we all rolled into the finish at Spring Valley together, three amigos from Los Angeles who had all just popped their gravel racing cherries. The icing on that cherry cake was hearing that our mate Eric Brunt had taken 3rd overall representing Mudfoot!

The term epic is oft overused…

HAVE NO DOUBT, THIS RACE IS EPIC!

Huge thanks you to Chris Skogen and his whole crew, the Almanzo volunteers, sponsors and the folk of Minnesota that made this event so damn amazing.

What a blast!

Kjeld @superdomestik