Random Places

Back in November I got some news. I won the lottery! No, I didn’t win any money, in fact winning this lottery costs me money.

Let me back up first a bit for some context…

In the last couple of years I had gotten into running however a few months before a foot injury had curtailed my running and marathon training. In order to stay fit and active I started spending a lot more time on the bike. As I child I was constantly on my bike riding around town and this continued into college where I did a few small bike races. Nothing special and I certainly wasn’t at a competitive level but I really enjoyed it. Once I moved to New Hampshire, between hating riding in traffic (most of the roads are narrow with traffic moving too fast) and just being busy with work I stopped riding. I would do some trail riding on a mountain bike but I missed the joy of covering longer distances under my own power.

Then I discovered this thing called a “gravel bike”. Basically like a road bike but a bit more rugged and with bigger tires. Something better able to handle the unpaved (and often unmaintained) back roads than a road bike but more efficient and better for covering longer distances than a mountain bike. I have been discovering miles and miles of remote back roads (with nearly no traffic) near my home.

Some might call it a character flaw but I say it is just a sense of adventure, either way when I get into something new I want to push it to a limit. This typically means getting into some form of competition. When I got into dirt bike riding I didn’t just stop there, I had to go race in Baja. When I got into running I had to run a marathon (and hope to eventually run an ultra-marathon but that is a story for another day). Of course pretty quickly I had similar thoughts about my gravel bike riding.

As it turns out there is a lot of gravel racing in my home state of Kansas. The biggest of all of them is a race called Unbound Gravel in Emporia KS. This one isn’t just popular with the locals, it is gets riders including top pros from around the world. The event has gotten so big they cannot handle the number of people who want to do it so they use a lottery.

There are multiple race distances. The shorter races are 35 or 50 miles which really would not be worth traveling half way across the country for. The popular races are the 100 mile and 200 mile distances. These would be interesting but honestly they are TOO popular and honestly I don’t want to be in that big of a crowd (there are 1500 to 2000 riders in these races).

But then I heard about this thing called “Unbound XL” which typically is only around 200 riders. This race is 350 miles long and completely self supported (i.e. if you need it you either get it from convenience stores along the route or bring it with you). You have a time limit of 36 hours so you need to average about 10MPH in order to make the cuttoff and be considered an official finisher.

I must have something wrong with me because of course the 350 is the one I entered the lottery for. My first thought when I got the email saying I got in was “oh crap, I need to get busy training”.

When I won the entry to the race I had 6 months to train. I have been training (mostly indoors due to winter in New Hampshire) and am now down to just 2 months left and the real serious training begins. Do I know for sure I can handle this? No, but that’s what makes it an adventure.