Week #16 - 545 miles
There are not many gravel events that I go to multiple times, but IWAR is an exception. I missed the event in 2020 after they moved it to the fall because of Covid. I have now toed the line four times and crossed the finish line four times. In the five years of IWAR - 244 people have started - 37 official finishers - 6 unofficial finishers who missed the final cutoff time - including me in 2019.
My goal for this year was to just get that fourth finish. Once we started off, I didn't feel that great. I didn't get much sleep the night before and we started at 4am. I was hoping that once we got rolling things would start coming together, but it never really happened.
There was a pretty big group through the first checkpoint at 73ish miles. Mark, Dave, and myself didn't stop at the C-store while most of the others did. A few miles down the road Dave dropped back and Mark & I were out by ourselves. I was feeling a little better by now and tried to work with Mark as much as I could. He is super strong on the flats and downhills but I would pull him back on the hills. Around 90ish miles Josh had bridged up to the us and once him and Mark started working together my day was coming to an end. I realized that if I was to finish I need to let them go and concentrate on me.
As I rolled out of the second checkpoint at 155 miles, I figured the would be a C-store on the route but there wasn't. I knew I had enough food to get me through but a little more water and a Coke would be nice. I decided to press on and I found a hydrant and a corral around 165 miles. At Malvern (183 miles) Cory and John had caught up with me and we stopped in the Casey's. Cory rolled out first and I went with for just a bit. A few miles down the road Jonathan caught up with me we road together for a few miles until he saw Cory's lights and he started chasing him.
As it got dark, I got tired really quick. I have always been able to ride through the night without much problem, but this night would be different. Around 11pm I was already falling asleep. Somewhere around mile 245 I took a wrong turn, but only went about 1/2 mile down the road before I figured it out. I decided then I needed to probably find a place to stop and take a nap. I finally came to a bridge that was closed and stopped there. I figured that if I happened to miss my alarm I had set the next riders would wake me up. I set my alarm for 20 minutes and 19 minutes later John and Tom rolled up. I only slept for a little bit, but I felt 1,000 times better. The three of us rolled into the Casey's at Creston (280 miles). After warming up for a bit with a cup of coffee and a breakfast burrito, Tom and I rolled out as JR was just coming in. It was great to see JR looking strong and know that he was still riding well that close to the finish.
As Tom and I rolled on the sun finally came up and it started to warm up a bit. Tom has attempted IWAR twice before and not got to the finish line, so this was going to be the year for him. He was saying that he had hopes to be in the top five and we were pretty sure there were only three in front of us from the tire tracks. I told Tom to roll in front of me at the finish line to make sure. We didn't know at the time that Josh had dropped at the second checkpoint. As it turned out we came in fourth and fifth overall which was just fine with me.
There is a pretty good chance that I will be back next year to see if I can finish for the fifth time because I am not very good a making smart decisions.
