Colorado spring weather is inconsistent as hell. Beautiful sunny days mixed with plenty of wind advisories, and precipitation in the form of rain or spring snow storms are all on the menu at any given moment. This year it’s been a perfect storm of preparation challenges for the upcoming gravel season: illness, flared-up old injury, wind advisories or bad weather, canceled races. If you can’t escape and get out of town, you learn to go with the flow and take full advantage of good weather days. It results in a slower process of coming into form, but it lasts and, I find, you can stay in form longer without burnout and enjoy the seasonality of the sport.
This past weekend, Zack and I drove the five hours south to Trinidad, Colorado, for a local gravel race Pony Xpress 160. In 100 miles, the race covers over 7,300 feet of climbing and tops out at 8,900 feet. There are quiet farms and pine and aspen forests butting up against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
We are a summation of our history, and curiosity is a really important part of that. Zack and I enjoy going to places and unpacking that history to try to understand how things have come to be currently. This region was a part of Mexico until the Mexico Cession of 1848 and you feel that influence mixed with typical late 1800s Colorado building styles.
A quarter of the population currently lives below the poverty line. Trinidad is known as the sex change capital of the world due to its history as a haven for sex reassignment surgery, has a bright and vibrant artist community, and has really embraced marijuana to help its economy. Needless to say, Trinidad feels like its own thing, full of life and character, and really great burritos.
Las Animas County opened up its fairgrounds for camping that weekend, so of course we had to bring the solar-run pull-behind trailer. The fairgrounds turned out to be literally a field covered in old cow poo, with views of the mountains on either side, and a bathroom with running water. It was perfect. The race itself leaves from the town of Cokedale, 9 miles away, so the field was the ideal in-between.
We left early enough from Fort Collins to hit up the Art Carpoia Museum of Trinidad. Trinidad hosts the second largest art car parade in the United States. Some of these cars are made out of passion, high school projects, and art therapy for people in prison. I do recommend a stop there if you get a chance; the $5 suggested donation is well worth it. We had a quick, pre-ride burrito at Habaneros’ Mexican Grill, the perfect local spot, before a pre-race spin up to the Trinidad sign overlooking the town.
We came back, checked in for the race and started the final mix of a bit of work, emails, and race prep into the evening. It was shortly after we learned of Moriah “Mo” Wilson’s murder. Although we operated in the same circles, we just never quite had a chance to meet yet. It hits hard as this community is really small and really close. Reflecting that night on early deaths of friends, families, and community, I realized that all were negligent drivers, known heart conditions, or sport-related freak accidents.
Saturday came. Unfortunately the field was really, really tiny this year, with other Colorado racers at either Gravel Locos or Wild Horse Gravel. I was the only “pro class” woman and there were 16 men in the same “pro class” field with a separate start.
The race kicks off with a 13-mile climb and although it started civilly; an e-bike rider joined our group from behind and blew the field apart, including me. I then rode the next ~92 miles almost entirely alone, passing dozens of age groupers and a handful of the men from my field. It was one of the more surreal rides, moving between being totally present, alive, and pushing the pace, and going into total robot automation mode, reflecting on mortality, and thinking about Mo and how I wished I was down at Gravel Locos with a lot of the gravel community mourning.
With newly and deeply graded roads, the times were slower this year and the higher elevation parts of the course were quite technical. I finished 5 hours and 37 minutes later, 7th in the “pro class” if you were to combine genders. Zack finished 4th. The fitness is coming along great now for Unbound.
We sat around with dehydration and altitude headaches, among our peers, catching up a bit and waiting for the lost checks to be rediscovered, so we could do podiums and get out of there. It was good to suffer and feel a lot that day in particular. The checks were eventually found, the podium eventually happened, and we scooted back to the camper for showers, and eventually dinner with my parents who also participated. Then it was back to checking for any updates on Mo’s death, and the long sleepless night that often follows a long or high altitude race before a morning departure home.