Ben Welnak knows how to put on a show. Who promotes a ride or a race that is unmarked, has zero aid stations and still knocks it out of the park, that dude! I really enjoy his events. Did I mention the races are free? Check out Ridinggravel.com for more of his shenanigans. It's so awesome that a FREE event can raise more money for charities than if the promoter were to charge an entry fee. Cyclists are a cool bunch.
The ride starts with a neutral roll out led by Ben. It was a good warm up for me, I was late getting there so I was thankful for that. I didn't eat at all leading up to the ride, which started at Noon. I helped a customer early this AM and was tied up and in a rush to make it, I didn't even stop for food. Bad idea really. But I guess my coffee held me over.
Shortly after the roll out, we hit this incredibly fun stretch of singletrack and double track in the Greenland open space. The pace was high and I wasn't happy with my positioning so I lit a match and passed everyone but the lead guy on a roller. I'm glad I did because we soon opened a gap on everyone by this point. I took over pacing with Mike on my wheel, he was strong but I wanted to climb just a tad faster and make sure no one else bridged back up to us. I recognized Mike from last years Greenland Gravel race and he was super strong then, so I knew if we kept it steady, we could stay away from the chasers. Colorado is rad because you never know who you are racing and at what level most these guys race. Mike had a stocky build and was absolutely drilling it when he took pulls. Honestly, he could have dropped me early on if he would have pulled just a tad harder on the flats and false flat sections. He was climbing fast as well, but I wasn't going to go down easy.
About 2 hours and 37 miles into the ride, I knew we had our gap. It was windy and we were working well together. I had a tough decision to make, I knew if I let things continue how they were, Mike would take me in the end if it came to a sprint or the last stretch of road(mostly downhill) at the finish. Mike was a pro roadie and apparently a very accomplished track racer, I don't have any business trying to sprint against him. I threw in some hard attacks on some rollers, about 7 attacks within 10 mins but I couldn't shake Mike and if I did, the gap was so small he would catch me on the downhills with ease.
For the next 8 miles we worked together again, taking hard and equal pulls. Mike, if he was hurting had the best poker face I've ever seen. Rock solid upper body, with no movement in his shoulders. I noticed when he would get behind me when I would pull that he would wince a bit and I knew he was hurting. I made a great move on the last climb of the day(which happened to be the steepest, reaching about a 13% max grade). I left it all out there, knowing that there was a long 2 mile downhill finish, If I were to go I'd have to commit and never look back. Thankfully, it all worked out!
Thanks to Ben and company for an awesome event. I'm stoked to hear we were able to raise over 2200 dollars for Kids on Bikes. There are such cool people in this world doing really rad things, very inspiring.
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