Tour of Hermann Gravel Challenge #fuledbyscience #thisismaplewood #justanotherdayonthebike

The past weekend was the Tour of Hermann Gravel Challenge. Day 1 was 95 miles and 7200+ feet of climbing. The weather looked bad to start the day off but luckily the rain ended and the wind wasn't as bad as it suppose to be. I took off around 9 miles into the race once we got to the first big hill. We had 3 - 30+ mile loops to do. It was nice to break the race up into sections. The second loop had a lot of challenging hills that just kept coming one after another. On the 3rd loop the gravel was really loose so it made it hard to get any traction going up the climbs. I finished the first day in just over 5:30 hours of riding.
Day 2 started off with great weather. Warmer temps and a bigger field of riders made for a nice day. We had around 18 miles on the Katy Trail to start things off. We got a good paceline going so it made for a nice warmup. My legs actually felt really good despite race hard the day before. Once we got to the hills the field thinned out quickly. About 4 of us broke away but we still worked together well. Cody (a Cat 2 racer) pushed the pace, so I tried to just settle in and not work any harder than I had too. Once we got to the end of the first lap (52 miles) one of the stopped, so we were down to 3 in the pack. When we took off for the second lap (52 miles), Greg said he was going to drop back also. That left Cody and myself for the rest of the day. Cody continued to push the hills and a couple times it was hard to hang on. We kept talking and Cody didn't seem to want to ride much harder so we were able to work together most of the day. Cody did a lot of the pulling since I was getting pretty tired as the day went along. I still was able to climb well when I had to, so that was encouraging for Dirty Kanza. Cody is also doing DK and The Epic 150 coming up this weekend.
I have been really pleased how the training has been going this spring for DK. I know that I will need to get a couple more really long rides in prepare. I am still a little worried about my nutrition for the race. I really tried to eat a lot of food during Day 2 and it seemed to work well. Hydration is going to be a big factor at DK and I still debating on what I am going to do for that part.