Book of Chad

MIVA Unpaved, the second of the three-part series of gravel races on Vancouver Island. Out of the three, this one’s main attribute is that it is by far the smoothest course. At 110 km and 1800m of climbing it is still a pretty hard day in the saddle.

The ride starts out directly on the gravel and goes up hill immediately. I didn’t make it up the climb in the first group in the previous year so I decided I would try to start from the front and keep the pace high but manageable. My hope was to discourage anyone from attacking the climb too hard for me to stay on. Obviously this was a foolish strategy, and halfway up the climb a couple riders including the race favourite John Vanderveen went around me causing me to spike up to 800w to stay with them. Shortly after that I started to fall back in the group and a minute later I was sliding out the back. A group of roughly 6 people made it in that first selection. You can see what that first climb numbers below. 

At the top of the climb one of my racing companions from Forbidden Gravel Experience was also dropped and seemingly was sitting up for me. I caught up with Quinn and we went to work. There was no words said for 20 minutes that we started working together taking pulls as the second group on the road. We did have some conversation after that as we get the pressure up and worked well together. Our twosome worked for just over an hour until I had a mechanical.

Some how my front derailleur had come loose and had found its way outside of my chainrings, fallen down and clamped back against them. I had to fish out my tool and detach then reattach the derailleur. I moved it high on the mount aligned it by eye and got my chain back on. The hardest part of mechanicals for me is watching people zoom by, every person is a place that you worked hard for. Back on the bike and the chase was on. 

I quickly caught up to the back of to two riders that were about 30 seconds apart. As I past the first rider he slotted in behind me and I pulled him to the second. the second rider was my gravel racing companion Cory. After a bit of a laugh that we found ourselves together and a quick recap of our mechanicals on the day we went forward together trading pulls with the other rider acting as passenger. After a quick decent followed by a long shallow climb I looked back and was alone again. I found out later that Cory had suffer a chain drop, one of several he had that day, and he never found his way back to me. 

The remaining 60 km were just me and my bike. I managed to slowly claw back every place that I had lost in my mechanical. The last person I passed on course was Quinn who had suffered a puncture with about 22kms to go. The final climb I went steady and there was one competitor in sight but every time I put in a bit of a dig he would too. He must have looked back at me a 100 times, however there wasn’t enough course left to make any change. 

The best thing of this course is the finish, the worst part is the first climb. The funny part is they are the same gravel road. The decent makes you forget all the climbing at about 60 kph for 9 minutes. 

Distance: 110 km
Time: 4:34:06
Avg Speed: 24.1 kph
Avg Power: 210 W
Normalized Power: 240 W
Elevation Gain: 1840 m
Place: 7th