I knew I was in trouble when I thought I might win.
Is this what Lucius Paullus felt like when it started getting hectic at Canae (216 BC)? Were these thoughts racing through Lindsay Jacobellis’ mind down the homestretch in Turin (2006 AD)? Was I truly in such tragically august company?
Apparently. And then, moments before the Pecan Shaker Gravel Roll began, a guy wearing checkerboard Vans with an ancient Schwinn ten-speed pulled up, and I knew he had me beat in the one category I’d had a chance in: Person With The Least Race-Appropriate Bike.
Still, I had more pressing concerns. Like the lack of feeling in my fingers. It was 43 degrees at 7:33 a.m. on Lumpkin Street. I had neglected to bring gloves.
I was not wholly unaccessorized, however. I was wearing my NOT A MORNING PERSON novelty tube sox. No one at the starting gate was going to mistake me for frontrunner.
As I edged my commuter-friendly (not a gravel or trail) bike into the starting group, I saw a woman on the sidewalk dragging casually on a cigarette, staring at these Lycra-clad interlopers who’d descended on her middle Georgia town.
“Nice morning,” I said to her, nodding at the cloudless sky.
“We had four a half inches of rain here Wednesday,” she replied. “You have fun on your bike.”
The police escort out of town led to a dirt road turnoff. The herd of skin suits was soon out of sight.
I could concentrate on riding my bicycle.
The dirt road turned into red clay. Wheels hummed. A guy on a gravel bike laughed as he passed me: “I like your skinny tires.” Not a compliment. So I caught him and sat on his wheel as the sun shot up. (Forgot my sunglasses too.)
The harder he charged, the more I stayed on his wheel. His rear tire spat pellets on clay into my face. I swallowed. I was cured of any iron deficiency I may have had.
Miles passed. Not keeping track of miles. I had not downloaded the app. Time and space marked by landscape: green and brown and red and purple, light and leaf. A rotary tiller rumbling around a fish pond.
Pedal hard. Drink water, spit mud. Great sucking sinkholes of the stuff. Impassable.
Between peanut fields in Pulaski County, I caught the griping peloton stuck like tigers in tar and ran past them with my bike on my shoulder. My old sneakers better than their pretty-toed clip-in slippers.
Remount. Keep pedaling. Rubber side down.
The sign at County Line Baptist Church: WELCOME! GRAVEL BIKE REST STOP. The minister and his wife handed out packet of Fig Newtons and bottles of water.
Legs got stronger. In rhythm. Outwardly insular. Mud turned to red clay again, then loose dirt through pecan groves, watermelon patches, up-and-down flumes through rooty tree thickets. To brake or not to brake? Whatever it takes.
Forty miles later, I knew I had it made. The ride hadn’t been so hard. My guts crumpled like tinfoil. BONK! The trail turned to sand. I had to dismount and push my sled.
The Creek Indians were right here, give or take 300 years. At Sun Trust Bank on Commerce Street, where the digital clock said 74 degrees. Rolling the last half mile towards heaven.
High noon at the finish line. I lay happily in the grass.
—Peter Relic, Hawkinsville, Georgia, April 13, 2024
