Dirty Kanza 2015: Sometimes Just Getting to the Finish Line Is a Victory

I've been a fool for physical adventure my entire life. Long bike rides, hikes and cross-country ski outings, multi-day bike touring, backpacking, wilderness canoe trips -- I love them all. My adventure lust is most often satisfied by long, hard bike rides, and I spent the evening of May 29^th, 2015 mentally preparing for the coming day’s Dirty Kanza 200, which promised to be the most challenging one-day experience of my life. 

The 200-mile event has been described by many as the world’s hardest one-day gravel bike race. The race is run on rocky gravel and dirt roads, many of them unmaintained, in the Flint Hills of Kansas, land of rugged topography and the largest intact tallgrass prairie in the United States.

Physical preparation had been going on since I fell in love with biking as a 10-year-old in 1968, and included lots of touring, a little road racing, and decades and many tens of thousands of recreational miles. It had gotten more serious since the fall of 2012, when I took part in my first 100-mile gravel race, the notoriously difficult Heck of the North, and was bitten by the gravel-racing bug. Between the 2012 Heck of the North and this year’s DK200, I had ridden over a dozen other 100-plus-mile gravel races as well as a number of 50- to 86-mile races. All were grueling and challenging, with many of them taxing me to what I thought were my limits. As it turned out, I was to learn a thing or two about my limits at the DK200.

As I reviewed and discussed the route and strategy for the coming race with my hotel roommate, friend and Northfield riding partner Scott K, we agreed that the stretch from 107 miles to 175 miles was sure to be the hardest portion of the race, with most of that section going primarily north into what was forecast to be a strong and gusting north wind. Although the area had received flooding rains in recent weeks, and we knew the course included some stream crossings, we assumed that we would be routed around any hazardous crossings. Little did we know that Mother Nature would throw far greater challenges than headwinds or stream crossings our way well before we reached the “hard” point in the race.

Scott getting his game face on

Scott and I rose around 4:20 a.m. to eat, dress, and give ourselves plenty of time to ride the three miles from our hotel to the start line in downtown Emporia in advance of the 6:00 race start. By well before 6:00, Commercial Street was packed with what I later learned was 882 hearty souls who started the 200-mile race. (Another 676 started the “Half Pint” 100-mile race a short while later.) The fast guys and gals lined up in the 12-hour staging area (the approximate time they would expect to finish under good conditions). Scott and I knew we didn’t have a chance of staying with the big dogs, and hung between the 14- and 16-hour staging area. Our race, like that of the vast majority of the field, would not be a battle for the win. Rather, it would be a journey to find out what we were made of, and whether we had what it takes to finish. We hoped for respectable times, but finishing was the primary goal for both of us.

The race started with a whimper, as the massive peloton was halted by a freight train crossing Commercial Street less than half a mile from the start. When the train passed, we left town on blacktop at a controlled pace, crossed the ominously flooded Cottonwood River, then turned onto gravel at 1.7 miles, and the race was on. The pace picked up immediately on damp but firm and very rideable gravel, and I found myself thinking that conditions might not be too bad after all. I was soon to find out just how delusional that kind of thinking was.

Scott and I picked our way through a sizeable group and were soon at the head of a double line next to another rider on a Salsa Warbird (the bike I ride). Striking up the first of numerous enjoyable conversations for the day, I learned Bregan was a Brooks England (as in Brooks saddles) rep from Berlin (as in Germany) who, along with several Brooks mates, had been flown to Kansas for the event by Brooks, one of the DK’s major sponsors. As I was riding next to Bregan, alarming noises began emanating from my bike. I thought that my bottom bracket was acting up, and as the clicking, grinding and shrieking noises grew louder, I feared that serious trouble lay ahead for my bottom bracket and my chances of finishing the ride.

At this point we were approaching the first unmaintained section of road, and all thoughts of the noisy bottom bracket were banished as we turned a corner and saw dismounted riders in a muddy scene reminiscent of a Civil War battlefield stretching out to the horizon, as far as the eye could see. I, along with everyone else, dismounted and started pushing my bike through the mud up a long,

gentle incline. Within 20 feet, I couldn’t even push my bike, as the heavy, clinging mud instantly gummed up both wheels to the point where the wheels wouldn’t turn. I quickly cleared the worst of the mud, shouldered my bike (as everyone else was doing), and started trudging. Feet were immediately caked in large, heavy mud nests, and some of us headed for the tall grass on one side or the other of the road when there was room between the mud and the roadside barbed wire, where it was sometimes possible to push rather than carry one’s bike. The crest of the hill was about a mile from the start of the death march, and as I approached it, I hoped that the end of the worst of the mud was near. These hopes were dashed when the hill was crested, as the muddy marching throng once again stretched ahead as far as the eye could see. With remarkably good cheer, all carried on, until we finally reached rideable road surface once again after three miles of mud hiking over about an hour’s time. Quickly cleaning the worst of the mud off tires, frame, shoes and running gear, it was back to actual biking, which was a joy after what we had just cleared. I had lost contact with Scott on the mud hike; thinking he was ahead of me (I later learned he was actually behind me), I pushed on alone. The death march had blown the field apart, and I rode primarily solo for the next 25 miles or so.

I now once again heard the awful noises my bike was making (which I was soon to realize was my rear hub bearing assembly in the process of total self-destruction), and had to deal with the daunting possibility that there might be other ferocious mud pits, and the fear that my bike might fail before I did. All I could do was pedal on, so pedal on I did.

At mile 19 we crossed Interstate 35 (which runs northeast to southwest along the edge of and through portions of the Flint Hills) on a rocky, muddy minimum maintenance road into range country and were now well and truly into the Hills. Beautiful, rolling hills with rock outcroppings,

Feeling pretty good in the early miles --muddied but not yet bloodied and battered

open cattle range (with cattle on and flanking the road numerous times), cattle guards, muddy, rocky, perilous descents to crossings of small, swollen streams, often with concrete spillways washed out on both sides from recent flooding made for challenging and often harrowing riding. I found myself wishing I had significant mountain biking experience, as the course more resembled mountain biking than gravel riding for much of the day.

One small water-crossing was a narrow pinch-point, and several riders ahead of me slowed, rode past a rider stopped along the side of the trail, and passed through shallow water without incident. I slowed, entered the water, and was pitched over the handlebars when my front wheel disappeared into a hidden, deep hole. I caught myself with my left hand, didn’t get too badly banged up, brushed off the worst of the mud, and carried on. My hand started throbbing, and I feared that I might have broken a bone, but the pain wasn’t bad enough to stop me. As it turned out, soon I would be experiencing pain in enough other places that the hand pain faded into the background.

I had hoped, with much of the first 100 miles of the course having a side wind or tailwind, that the first half of the day would be easier and faster than the second half, which promised to be primarily side wind and headwind riding. This proved to be a vain hope, as essentially all of the tailwind sections were muddy, often unrideable, and/or so rocky that they had to be ridden with caution.

Careening down a winding, rocky descent to a stream crossing at mile 43, I realized too late that there was a huge washout on the far side of the concrete spillway. I bunny-hopped the chasm, landed with a sickening bang on my rear rim, and instantly knew I had pinch-flatted. Dismounting, I changed the tube in the cold (have I mentioned that the temperatures, unexpectedly, never rose out of the 50s all day?), wet mud, my fingers stupid with cold and incipient fatigue. Just as I was beginning to re-inflate the tire, Scott rode up, stopped and kept me company until I was ready to roll again in a couple of minutes. My pump had not been able to inflate the rear tire to the 50 psi I like to ride normally, so I was back on the road with a somewhat squishy rear tire, a recipe for disaster on the rocky roads we were traveling.

Within a few miles I knew I had to try to get more pressure in my tire, so I dismounted, bid Scott adieu, spent a couple of minutes laboring to firm up my tire, and then jumped back on my bike.

Conditions were brutal, with mud and rocks being the order of the day

More mud, more rockiness, and I was struggling to find a good cadence. Soon another rugged stream crossing approached. Again I followed other riders through the water, and this time, bang! – I hit a nasty rock shelf with my front tire. Pinch-flat number two. Fifty miles into a 200-mile day, and I had already walked through about four miles of mud, flatted twice, gone over the handlebars once, and pitched over into the mud at another point when a rider ahead of me stopped abruptly and unexpectedly on a rutted and rocky uphill goat path, leaving me inadequate time to unclip from my pedals. Worse, I was listening to the sure and steady destruction of the bearings crucial to being able to ride at all (let alone with minimal rolling resistance). It was now crystal clear that all my physical and psychological resources would be needed to finish Dirty Kanza 2015.

Fortunately, road conditions were more manageable over the next 20-plus miles (though they included a river crossing or two and a detour around impassable floodwaters) to the first checkpoint

Water crossings were a welcome relief from
mud and rocks, and an opportunity to
 clean bike and body

in Madison, where I once again came upon Scott, who was almost ready to leave.  I gobbled rice cakes and as much other food as I could (it was almost impossible to eat on the fly, with the sketchy road conditions and muddy hands, though I had managed to eat a banana and a few Hammer gel packets, along with drinking most of two bottles of Perpetuem en route), loaded up with food, fresh water and Perpetuem bottles, and used a floor pump to re-inflate both tires to 50 (rear) and 45 (front) psi. As I was doing this, I realized with alarm just how trashed my rear wheel bearings were. The wheel wobbled radically, and after a brief and futile attempt to finger-tighten and adjust the hub assembly, I made a decision to ride on rather than try to find a mechanic who might show mercy on me and attempt an emergency repair. As I struggled with the decision regarding what to do about my rear wheel, I told Scott to head out without me. We were not to see each other again for the rest of the race.

The rest of my race remained a struggle with my bike and the road conditions. Seemingly endless

A moment of doubt and pain after three flats
 and mounting mechanical difficulties,
and nearly 100 miles yet to go

miles of rugged four-wheel-drive minimum maintenance roads, interspersed with gravel roads that were almost all rougher and rockier than anything I normally ride in the Northfield area, and another pinch flat at about 100 miles left me just about drained of the will to continue. After repairing the third flat (a lengthy affair that required patching two pinch-flat holes, as I had only packed two spare tubes, and saw scores of riders stream by me, including Bregan from Berlin), and with my rear wheel now wobbling noticeably and alarmingly all the time, I rode a few miles, and, feeling emotionally bottomed out, pulled off of another four-wheel-drive section of minimum maintenance to sit by a beautiful stream and collect myself. I drank a Red Bull, ate as much trail mix as I could force down, and gave myself a stern talking-to. I reminded myself I was out here on a ride I had wanted to do through this beautiful country for years, there was nowhere else I wanted to be and nothing else I wanted to do on my 57^th birthday, and I just needed to bear down and keep at it unless my bike became absolutely unrideable.

With renewed spirit, and aided by the Red Bull’s caffeine, I managed to find a decent groove, worked with a few other riders for short periods, had a good talk with a couple of great guys wearing Outspokin Cycles kit (from London, Ontario, and riding Salsa Fargos with beefy tires that I eyed with envy), apologized for sucking a wheel for the first three-mile stretch straight into the strong north headwind, and managed to convince myself that, by god, I was going to finish this damned bike race!

I rolled into the second checkpoint in Cottonwood Falls at 155 miles as the sun was setting. My original stretch goal had been to make it to the finish line before sunset at 8:42 p.m. to earn the coveted "Race the Sun" custom print – hah! After re-inflating my rear tire with a floor pump and again downing as much food as my protesting digestive system would take in, along with a Coke and a Red Bull, I turned on my front and rear lights and headed out of town back onto the open prairie for the last 45 miles or so of the course. I knew that at roughly 175 miles almost all of the climbing and headwind would be over, so I felt my odds of finishing were improving.

Reading my cue cards in the dark was just the latest struggle. I would pull the appropriate one out of the cue holder and hold it in front of my headlight as I was riding, memorizing the next few turns, and play my headlight onto the road signs as I approached the intersections of what I thought were my turns. I fortunately connected once again with a small group of riders, one of whom was a local and knew the roads, which gave me a bit more navigational confidence.

I was following tail lights down what I fervently hoped had to be the last bit of really rough four-wheel-drive road at about 170 miles, over the crest of a hill, and down yet another white-knuckle, muddy, rutted, rocky descent when I saw the rider about 50 feet ahead of me go down in a particularly nasty bit of rutted mess. I was committed to the deep, muddy rut, with no way to change my line, braked as best I could, and as the downed rider was picking himself up and getting out of the way, down I went too, hard, on my right shoulder. I had broken my right collarbone on February 14^th in a fluke cross-country skiing accident, so my first thought as I was lying dazed in the mud was “oh shit, not again.” I sat up and collected my wits, and realized with tremendous relief that, while my shoulder was scraped and sore, nothing was broken. As this was happening, another group of riders stopped and checked to see if I was okay. I assured them I was, and one of them handed me my precious Dirty Kanza water bottle, which I had been carrying in my back jersey pocket, and which had flown out in the crash. I would likely have lost it in the dark had they not done so. The rider handing it to me did a double-take and said “Bruce?” Once again, it was Brooks’ Bregan from Berlin!

My rear wheel was now rubbing almost continually against the rear stay of my frame, making for even harder going (and even more maddening noise from my badly abused Warbird). Onward, onward, onward. Other riders pulled away from me and my damaged bike, and I settled in for a long, solo grind into Emporia as blinking tail lights receded into the distance.

About six miles from town, I saw klieg lights in the distance and realized they had to be coming from downtown Emporia and the finish area! Re-energized, I rounded a curve, upped my pace… and everything went black. My headlight, which I had inadvertently put on the second of three intensity settings rather than the low setting needed to conserve battery, had died prematurely. I could almost have cried in frustration, as I would now have no way to read cue sheets or intersection road signs. Just as I was resigning myself to having to ride blind toward the klieg lights in the distance, I saw a rider alongside the road who had been making some kind of mechanical adjustment to his bike pull out onto the gravel with lights blazing. I quickly rode up to him and told him he was going to be my guiding angel for the last few miles into town. Dan from Knoxville, Tennessee was my rock and beacon for the next five miles, as I, totally spent, rode in his wake to the outskirts of Emporia.

At this point, I was so exhausted I could no longer hold his wheel, and I bid him adieu (as I had Scott so many hours earlier), knowing that I could navigate the last mile or so of city riding. As I turned the corner onto Commercial Street, I was flabbergasted that there was still a respectable crowd of spectators cheering and high-fiving me into the finishing chute, even at 12:43 a.m.   

I may never in my life have felt a greater sense of relief and accomplishment than I did as I crossed that finish line. It didn’t matter at all that the ride had taken me over 18 hours and 42 minutes, or that I finished 290^th out of 427 riders, well over five hours off the winning time. The winner, Yuri Hauswald, had ridden a truly heroic race, coming from 22 minutes off the lead at 150 miles to catch Michael Sencenbaugh on the edge of Emporia, and outsprinted Sencenbaugh to win by a bike length. My accomplishment was far humbler, but deeply satisfying nonetheless. Finishing at all under the circumstances was accomplishment enough as 455 out of the 882 starters, seasoned and hardened riders all, failed to do so under the brutally tough conditions and innumerable opportunities for ride-ending mechanical problems.

All finishers were greeted at the line with a handshake and a commemorative pint glass, complete with a coupon for a free beer at Mulready's Pub. I staggered the half block to the pub, bike and body equally filthy and battered. As I walked in, mud-coated and bloody, clutching my finisher's pint

glass, a huzzah went up among the assembled well-lubricated patrons. From well before the start to well after the winning finishers came in, the organizers of the DK200, a small army of volunteers, and the town of Emporia pulled out all the stops to make this a wonderfully memorable event. As I drank the hardest-earned and most enjoyable complimentary pint of beer in my life, I was exhausted, filled with satisfaction that I had toughed it out, and positive that I had completed the only Dirty Kanza that I would ever ride.

After a week of recovery and processing of the amazing experience, I’m not so sure. I know there are more adventures to be had, and more lessons about myself to be learned, and I may just have to test myself in the Flint Hills again next year.