Words by Thorpe Moeckel, Out Of True

A mild November morning, temps in the 60’s, 8:25 am. We stand over our bike frames in the leaf-litter and mist, a hundred people or so. It rained all night. It will rain again before long.

This is the start of the 3rd Appalachian Mountaineer, a cycling race of the gravel persuasion. Half will race 84 miles, the other half 69, but we will start together.

We are dressed in tight, synthetic clothes. Legs are glimpsed, rigs. There is small talk. There are stares.

We are here, though some will deny it, to suffer. We like endurance racing, especially like doing it in these ancient mountains, because suffering lives where wisdom lives, and wisdom lives in a house made of everything the heart can bear.

We are here, too, because we feel alive and happy in our suffering, perhaps even ecstatic. That it is of our own design, this suffering we’re about to undertake, makes all the difference.

The race director is speaking now. He speaks of wet leaves, descents, Bald Mountain, local traffic. He is warning us. He is wishing us all a good race.

Our glasses fog up. The ground is soft under our strange, stiff shoes.

photo by Tony Greatorex @twowheeltransmissions

This is Craig County, Virginia, not far from the West Virginia line, yet another of Gravelachia’s many hearts, arguably one of its finest.

Note: I cannot win this race. It’s okay, it’s good. I have a demanding family and work life, and other passions, too. I don’t invest the time or money in the training and the gear required to win, but I’m no slouch: there are 2600 beloved miles on my legs thus far this waning year.

My goal is to have fun, meet new people, learn about bikes and riding, and also to race smart and hard and have nothing left at the finish.

My other goal, to put it baldly, is to beat a certain rider, a guy, let’s call him Y. I want to finish before he does.

Y is fast. Y is sharp, ferocious, fascinating. Y has ridden every day for the last 4675 days. Y, at 61, is ten years older than I am. Y is retired. Y rides a nicer, lighter bike. Y is forty pounds lighter than I am. Y will likely beat me.

But I can beat Y, I sense this. I know his times from that social riding app we use. He isn’t much faster. I know he rides every day, and while I respect and am inspired by and even envy that (and sometimes think Y must be nuts, nuts in a different way than me), I still want to beat him today. This want is part of the fun.

Y is in the lead group, which I’m two hundred yards behind.

The race has started; yes, races do that: I’m waiting and then I’m five miles or more down the road before I realize it started.

My legs are stiff. Sleep was poor. My head aches, but soon other aches will override these until there is no ache but onward, in form or not in form.

I am not interested in joining the lead group. This is pavement, these first miles. Thick air heavy over the fields, infinite varieties of dun, gray, rust. Form matters; matter’s forms say so. Cadence as stillness. They are going hard, that lead group; yes, let them. Some can bear it, some will pay.

I catch a guy, tail him. He is working too hard, torso bobbing like a goob at a music fest. I have passed him. I’m not going to see him again.

Legs, hips, minor finger motions. The tiniest sway side to side.

Now the gravel, the first mountain to climb. I’m passing cyclists, two here, two more on up there. At the summit, I pass two more and then a few on the leaf-slick switchbacks down the other side.

Alone on Pleasant Valley, a paved road, I come around another bend to glimpse up ahead my pal G riding in a line with a strong woman and a tall, lean guy. I catch them. The four of us, we take turns pulling, chat a bit.

G is local to Roanoke and environs. The tall, lean guy is from Philly, the woman from DC. There is an odd intimacy, not just odd for being immediate, in this group, or maybe it’s not odd since we all share a particular hunger.

Johns Creek sprawls leaf-choked and low to our left. I like seeing those waters from my bike at various speeds, looking and not looking and pedaling and seeing along the way all those fractured and fluid, congealing visions, snippets, moving pictures, a long velocity collage, propulsive and smeared.

These are the Johns Creek’s lead in miles above the gorge, the gorge where one of the best four miles of class III/IV whitewater in Central Appalachia is but a trickle today through a the massive, beautiful piles of boulders and rocks, despite the night’s rain. We’ve had a dry fall.

More wondrous miles, suffering’s pains and pleasures (as if they differ). That choreography of bikes, riders, landscape, air, sky, and road. Now G and the woman turn left on 311 for the 84, Philly and me go right for the 69. We wish each other well.

My legs are waking up. The air is so heavy. It’s dreamlike out here, apparitional.

Fact: Philly goes harder, leaves me often, but I catch him—is he letting me? Is his a wobbly, inconsistent cadence, or is that mine?

We’re in a beautiful valley, long and narrow, the small creek at lowest ground with the land rising from it, fields and woods alternating until the ridge’s low flanks, where it’s only woods from then on up to the peaks. No smoke from the chimneys, the air too warm for that. It feels like evening, has all day. Modulations of light hardly perceptible, especially through these glasses, the lenses more soiled with every mile.

We’re 20 miles in, now 25. The rhythm feels true. We’re on Sweet Spring now, a gravel road that curves in and around the hollows and flanks of ridges. This is National Forest. I’ve left Philly, but he isn’t far behind me. Solo at the first aid station, astraddle the bike, I swill some Coke, some electrolyte drink, and munch a banana. The guy manning the table says you’re in sixth.

Y is fifth, I sense it. It’s time to find him, time to lose Philly for good. I monge another quarter of a PB&J, and pedal on.

Sweet Springs Road goes and goes, miles of wiggly gravel of varying grades, hunters’ trucks parked along it (it is opening day of muzzleloader season, no shots audible, and likely none, as it’s far too warm for deer to be moving much).

Trees, leaves, mist, rain. Specks on the lenses, constellations; I let the glasses slide down my nose to see over them, see at all. Ahead: the dense leaf debris, the gaps in it. The hardest packed gravel, the softer stuff. The potholes. The washboards. Downed limbs, logging dunnage. Now a truck rolls along, hunter in it, cigarette smoke—I pass him.

Several more wiggles, and there he is. Y doesn’t sense me. I pass him on a climb but he stays close. On the flat after the down, he rockets past. It’s okay. He’ll pay for that, I tell myself.

Now we’re descending Potts Mt, the rain coming down good, the gravel firm, fast. Y’s not far ahead. I see him around each hollow. I’m going to catch you, Y. I want to know how you ride every day for 4677 days and counting, I have some questions for you about that.

A hunter, gun over his shoulder, locks his truck. Crow sounds, a jay. I catch Y. The rain steady. There’s nothing to say. We’re not here to talk.

He knows I admire him, Y does. We may be old but we still have the fire. There’s beauty in that, not just because there’s listening in it.

At the bottom of Potts (what a lovely descent), pavement, narrow pavement, a creek beside it in and out of alders, laurel. When Johns Creek over the ridge is too high, I paddle this one, Barbours Creek. I like to ride my bike when time permits, but when the good rains come, I try to find a few hours to bounce down these rivers and creeks in a small boat, friends along also tuning in to the water in their own small boats.

Y again on his carbon noodle bar rocketing past my steel hardtail on the flat. I keep him in sight. I could eat Y, were I a cannibal; the little thing, and his bike, I could eat them both for lunch.

Bald Mountain Climb Time. I take a bite of Cliff Bar, sip some more water and turn onto the leaf-muddy and rutted fire road, which starts up, the climbing, at once, slick and peppered with stones.

Y is ahead. Y is not visible. Y is charging. Go on, Y, I’m going to catch you again.

The 40 mile racers who started an hour after us have been here. Smooshy smoosh, this road, this blown out gutter, this shitshow of rutlove.

We share this part of the route until the end, the 40, the 69, and the 84 riders. Some of the 40ers are still here, I pass them walking their bikes. “You’re doing great,” I tell them.

I hurt. I feel strong, not fresh, just strong. I haven’t felt fresh in years. This hurt, though, it’s luxurious.

They are doing great, the ones I pass, they really are. They are having a walk with their bikes up Bald Mountain. For some of them, this is their first race. For some, this is the longest they’ve been on a bike, the highest they’ve climbed. I love that.

We all are doing great out here, in our ways.

We’re racing for the day on the bike, and the day is waning, so we’ve already won. We’re here, racing to finish and to stay on our bikes and to know the fellowship of other riders, people of all ilk, who like to go up and down and along old mountains and drainages on remote gravel and dirt roads.

Who knows whether we’re racing to feel the bicycle’s angles and circles, all those complex, primary simplicities. Whether we’re racing to share a kindness with as many people as possible, especially the youngsters on the fanciest bikes, those carbon supermodels, the AR-15’s of bikes.

Maybe I’m an antique shotgun kind of guy, double barreled, side by side, etching on the chamber, walnut stock with notches scraped into it for every kill.

I’m here to share passing kindnesses, yes, but I want to be the one blasting on past, passing, leaving those kindnesses behind, giving everything I have with as much power and gentleness as possible.

Like it will open me up to receiving a totally refurbished motherboard or soul or something. Like it will neutralize death. Or liquefy hate’s drivetrain once and for all. Something.

This hill hurts. More people ahead. They walk their bikes on the fire road’s best line, of course. My rear tire spins in and out of the ruts’ escarpments as I pass them, huffing. I admire them all. I love them. They piss me off, fuel me on.

In truth, I can hardly see them. We’re in a cloud now, my glasses not just caked now but smeared.

Now on a wall of a pitch Philly passes me. “Hey, buddy,” I say, cornball as usual. “Hey,” he says back, I think. Maybe I’m hearing things. I pass him on the next little down.

We’re at the aid station now, Philly and me. There are others, chilling and socializing, sipping whiskey. The whiskey’s tempting, but I wipe my glasses clear with a paper towel, swill some Coke, munch an Oreo while stuffing a few more in my jersey, and take off before Philly.

I feel jagged, feel like my back is a cable on a suspension bridge loaded with vehicles, hurricane evacuees who left too late. Still, I breathe. I’m aware of you, back. I’m smiling at you, back. I say it, breathe it the same for the heart, the lungs, the legs, hands, etc.

The back broken from a mountain bike wreck. The wrist broken from a greenway-cruise-with-the-kids bike wreck. The retina calloused from a thirteen hour, 14k of elevation ride with no glasses and a lot of gnats and dust and then storms. The ribs broken from a mountain bike wreck. The leg stitched from a dirt bike wreck.

Different wrecks, different hurts and pleasures, different days, different healings.

It’s seven miles to Bald Knob summit, a bit more than a 2000 foot climb with some little flats and downs along the way.

Drizzly rain again. Another person walking, passed. We’re getting there, we’re close, dear bike with the worn to heck drivetrain, hang in there.

Not today the endless views off the long, undulating summit, not now, anyway; we’re in a cloud.

Is this the downhill? The three and a half mile down? I don’t see Y. Philly I don’t see. It’s squishy, rutted, bouldered, and very hard to see.

The bike sees, it tells you on the Bald Mt downhill all about the mank it sees, says it loudly into your every joint.

The legs want to pedal. They scream at me to pedal. They’re screaming to not be fixed, horizontal on the cranks, bearing the hits, rooting the balance.

There’s no place to sit and pedal. It’s all downhill, hairy and slick and leafed and rocky. Ruts. Potholes. People changing flats.

A pissed off bull, this ride down Bald. Heels down, fanny out behind the seat. On your left. On your right. The rigid gravel bikes, their riders, their poor hands and wrists, I whip by them. Another guy’s fixing a flat, or is it a bent rim?

I pass Y again. I pedal at every chance; there are few.

We’re at the road to the swinging bridge now. Aid station three. I wipe the glasses, pound some calories, get out of there.

The bike won’t shift. I fiddle with it. I pluck the cable along the top tube like some string band wannabe; this helps, isn’t pretty, but it shifts.

A mile from the downhill, and Y blasts on by. Hellfire. Go Y. A guy in pink flies past. My shifter works intermittently. Mid gear, 5 or 6 of the 11, is a racket of creaking and grinding.

Cable housing, old rear cassette, this may be your last hoorah.

I walk the slick, wood swinging bridge over Craig Creek. The ramp down the bridge’s far end, that’s hazardous. A guy at the bottom warns me, speaks of his fall.

A guy beside me, young, lean, a pro, kit all black but for the sponsor logos, names, having crossed the bridge after me, says, “You see a guy in pink?”

“Yes,” I say, “Five minutes ahead. Get him.” He blasts on down the road.

Damn, they are flying, these 84 race leaders, pink in first, black in chase. Damn.

Now the long gravel straight, a slow climb along Craig Creek. As much sand as gravel, and soft. I move hands inward on the flatbar adjacent the stem, tuck and crank. There’s a breeze, a headwind. It could be worse.

Nobody visible ahead. Nobody ahead or behind visible. No Y, no Philly.

A turn. Short stretch of pavement and then fire road again, slick mess of nasty with car-swallowing mud pits, though with narrow and squishy portage tracks through the scrub pines adjacent.

I pass two, two more. Another. Still, no Y.

Now the final road before the creek crossing. Two punchy little climbs.

I pluck my derailleur cable on the top tube again and again. Shift, dammit. It does, it shifts, though with a grinding racket like the chain’s going to blow. I pass two more.

The creek crossing, twenty yards across. I shoulder the bike, wade along. A woman nearly across, up to her waist. I catch her at the bank. “That felt good,” she says. “So good,” I say and move on down the road.

Y has finished. I’ll cross the line at 5:41, nine minutes and next after his fifth place. For now, it’s one more little climb and then down less than a mile to the finish, which is never the end.

Words by Thorpe Moeckel, Out Of True

Gravel Persuasion - A race report from the 3rd Appalachian Mountaineer