After a couple solid weekends of road racing, I did a bike change and raced my gravel bike on the logging roads of Nanaimo. A little unconventional lead up to Road Nationals, but a bike race is a bike race, and they are few and far between these days! It was great to get in one more hard effort before flying off to Nationals in a week.
In it’s first year as an event the MIVA Unpaved gravel fondo pulled out a great event for cyclists of all abilities. While I would have loved to have some fellow Red Truck teammates to ride with, it was great to have both my dad and brother out racing their respective categories.
The course was 70km of scenic logging roads near Nanaimo lakes. The women’s field was small, but star studded. It was very cool to line up against 2019 Unbound winner and gravel pro Amity Rockwell. A hard pace was set from the start by a few riders, which thinned out the field fast. By the top of the first climb though those riders had fallen back and there were only two of us left leading the charge. Amity and I set a steady pace to solidify our gap on the rest of the group. One of the highlights of my day was getting to ride with her for 20km and picking her brain on all things gravel racing!
The second group of men caught us on a steep climb and Amity was able to stay with them. From that point on I set a pace I knew I could hold for a while and carried on solo. Coming out of the technical water crossing section my brother caught back up to me after an ill timed mechanical. It worked to my favour as we shot out onto a wide flat road with a gusty headwind. He was able to pace me up to the second to last climb of the day where, I was able to get in with the third group of guys on the course.
Unfortunately, right at the top of the climb I got a flat tire and lost contact with the group of guys I was with. It was tubeless to the rescue though. I was able to pull a little sharp rock out of my tire and let the sealant do it’s thing. After losing a couple minutes I was back on the road and riding strong. Over the course of the last 18km I was able to re catch most of the people I had caught on the previous hill, crossing the line in second. It was an awesome day out riding bikes, and I am looking forward to toeing the line at nationals in one short week!