Unbound Gravel

Renegade wrote:

Hike a bike for 4+ miles in mud just doesn't even sound like fun.   

Renegade wrote:

My training got derailed a couple of different times with family.  I ended up doing the 50.  My course was great, no mud.  I had a friend ride the 200 and what the race director said in the riders meeting was not was delivered for the race.  Hike a bike for 4+ miles in mud just doesn't even sound like fun.  I might sag if anyone needs my help, but this may have been my last race for this event.  

thumper88 wrote:

This is accurate. The race director, asked specifically about that first section, described specifically the conditions we got the next day, and said if it were going to be like that he would re-route it to avoid it, given the route is already one of the hardest in cycling that there was no need to do that to people that early. He also said it was an easy reroute. It was of course a reroute they had done at least once before. So it clearly was not a red line in the sand, like, “We can’t reroute because it would change the nature of the race.” In fact, it didn’t change the nature of the race at all when they did it before.

That mud ended the day before it really started with (expensive) equipment failure for a lot of people who had saved and trained hard and dreamed of just a finish. Firefighters and teachers and factory workers among them, regular people who might well have finished after a hard day of heat, storms, flats and the other mile of mud late, but finished nonetheless. Some won’t be able to afford to return.

I did well, and I would do it again, but that’s no way to run a race.