gravel bike races – Bikes Kill Cancer

Warning: As the title suggests, this post is about farting. If you don’t find farting funny then you probably won’t enjoy this post.

“Proper preparation prevents poor performance.”

James Baker

“The race is won by the rider who can suffer the most.”

Eddy Merckx

“Proper preparation can be offset by a bad case of GI tract bloat. A bad case of bloating can be cured by a good bout of farts.”

Jay Middleton

If we started with Eddy Merckx’s quote you would probably be led to believe that this post is about how I suffered on the bike to take an amazing victory at the Pony Xpress 165 in Trinidad, CO. Sadly, this is not the case. This is a post about a digestive tract gone haywire and how it feels to pedal a bike for sixty plus miles with what feels like an entire Thanksgiving dinner resting in your gut.

The Pony Xpress 165 (that’s kilometers, not miles) is a gravel road bike race that takes place in the shadows of the Spanish Peaks in southern Colorado. For the most part the gravel is smooth and fast. it’s hilly but not overly steep, and the scenery is typical: drop dead gorgeous Colorado with its blue skies, sweeping vistas and big mountains.

Here’s a brief overview for those readers who aren’t familiar with gravel riding or racing: If you can imagine a road bike that, upon initial inspection, looks like the ones seen at a bike race like the Tour de France. If you look closer, though, you’ll notice that the bike has wider tires with small knobs, much like what you would see on a mountain bike, but smaller. There are other more nuanced differences with the bikes, as well. They include gear ratios and frame geometry. This isn’t some geeky bike blog so we aren’t going to go down that rabbit hole. I guess the easiest way to explain gravel bikes is that they look kind of like road bikes but they are made for riding on… well, gravel and dirt.

When did the bloat start? Was it the Jersey Mike’s veggie sub on the way to Trinidad? The chocolate chip cookies Gary and I devoured after the sub stop? Was it my 2nd COVID shot I’d gotten just four days before?

Actually, I think it was the incredible ravioli I’d had for dinner that night. Generally, good pasta (I mean, one hundred years of family tradition passed down from generation to generation kind of good!) is no problem for my digestive track. That pasta and its sauce (especially the sauce) were so delicious that I sat on the curb and gorged myself. I must have made quite the spectacle, as families stopped to gawk and take videos of my voracious feeding.

And then, just as I finished the last of it, I regretted everything I’d just done. A sudden burp erupted from my mouth. It was quickly followed by a rush of acid reflux up the back of my throat. Time had brought about changes in my body that I was not at all used to. I used to think puberty was the last stop on the Big Body Morph. Nope. Aging, it turns out, is puberty in reverse.

I was full and uncomfortable as hell. I remained that way for hours.

As the night sky wrapped the state park in a cool Colorado evening, I thought about farting. I wanted to fart so, so bad but I couldn’t do it! My stomach was tight and swollen. My only relief was the occasional pasta sauce-flavored burp.

Had I not been so bloated I could have thoroughly enjoyed this sunset.

In the morning I had some coffee. It was effective in that it got my “stomach gurgles” rumbling but, in the end, it failed to deliver. I felt dejected and hopeless as each trip I took to the pit toilet proved fruitless.

My normal pre-race meal of cold-soaked oatmeal may as well have been a bowl of wet heavy cement. Each bite dropped into my gut with an audible plop, where it would surely sit for the remainder of the day.

I packed some toilet paper and wet wipes into the bag on my bike. I guess I was hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

As I reached the second check stop, I debated whether or not to continue. There were 45 miles left. To drop out would mean that I’d have to wait forever at the aid station for someone (and there really wasn’t anyone available anyway) to come get me OR I could reverse my course and head back to the start. Forty-five miles back or fifty-five miles forward. Might as well go for the finish, I figured.

Despite my swollen belly I had a strong start. My energy waned quickly, though. I knew that it was because all that food and hydration were just sitting there in my gut, heavy and unmoving. My gut was backed up like a line of Porta-Potties at a barbecue festival.

I pedaled away from the aid station, feeling like I’d just finished my third helping of Thanksgiving dinner. Only there was no easy chair to sit back into while I loosened my belt. My only salvation would be a series of good, hardy farts.

The secret to farting on the bikes is not to push too hard. Should anyone force the issue, perching low on a narrow saddle and bumping along a dirt road in tight cycling shorts is a disaster just waiting to happen. The last thing I wanted to do was stand on the side of the road, deep in the woods and wash my shorts out in a mountain stream.

From miles forty-five to sixty, I divided my energy between pushing down on the pedals and praying for relief. Absolutely nothing budged, though. I continued to sip on water and consume energy gels. Thinking that once the dam did finally break my body would quickly make good use of the energy sitting in the reserviour of my stomach.

Had there been a bloat-curing Saint to pray to, I would have immediately stopped and gone inside to light a candle.

As I stood on the pedals and continued to climb, I felt the flutter of sweet relief. Suddenly, there was a long and puttering escape of wind from my backside. I made a couple more hard pedal stokes and, then, to my elation, there was another sweet breeze that erupted from my rear. I stopped, dismounted and took in the view.

Had I been cured? Could I race the last 40 miles back to the finish? There was no way.

I pointed the bike downhill to start descending. The fast bumpy ride down the hill jostled loose more bottom biscuits and so I let the bike and my bottom rip down the hill. My bike and body were like a fine-tuned wind instrument.

There was still a short but painful climb left before me. My belly may have been a little lighter, but I was still residing in the hurt locker. I struggled onward, using standing efforts to free more of the barking spiders out from within the murky bowels of my body.

I felt a certain amount of airiness come over me. My legs felt fresher and my bib shorts weren’t nearly as restrictive as before. Most importantly, I was having fun again.

By the third aid station, I realized I’d become a celebrity of sorts with the middles schoolers who were volunteering. A chorus of “Hey, it’s Unicorn Guy!” greeted me. They were referring to the crocheted unicorn that I’d zip tied to my handlebar and my matching unicorn Bikes Kill Cancer jersey and stickers that I had passed out at prior rest stops.

I’m sort of a big deal with my pet unicorn.

My spirits were buoyed by the enthusiastic greetings and the ice cold water they’d supplied for us. With newly found enthusiasm, I prepared to tap out the last 23 miles to the finish.

I was just shy of cresting the final climb when I was caught by the last remaining pro rider. The pro field started 90 minutes after us average slobs. My disregard for things like braking allowed me to catch her on the downhill.

Without any words spoken, we adjusted our pace and began a hard but steady rotation. Hitting the pavement that made up the five mile run in to the finish we grunted a few words at each other and took turns dropping the hammer at the front.

I was excited to feel so good but also bummed that it had taken so late in the race to feel that way. I pushed the pace on each slight rise in the road. I’d adjusted my goals a long time ago, somewhere back around Mile 52, and finishing in under eight hours was going to feel like a win.

I still felt a bit gassy. I made sure not to let loose any more of my flavorful vapors until I’d had my turn at the front, though. I’d been born and raised in the south. I was taught that a true gentleman never passes gas in front of a lady, much less right in her face when she’s inches from my back wheel.

7 hour 45 minutes all things considered, I could live with that.

Each tough ride brings some realizations. Reflecting back on the ride the next morning after a healthy poop, I realized…

Nothing lasts forever, not even stomach bloat.
Farting is not overrated.
Your worst day in the saddle will still have moments of fun and joy.
You’re never as young as you used to be. At some point, your body is going to remind you of that in a very big way.

The miles were ticking by under the steady systematic whir of bike gears and the cereal like crunch of Kansas’s flint gravel. My body was on cruise control and even though I was only 70 miles in of the 200 mile Dirty Kanza I was confident that I would finish before the sunset at 8:45pm of what was turning into a perfect summer day. The wind was at my back and I had dodged the early mechanical problems that befell many riders in the first muddy 20 miles. I was dancing on the pedals as I passed other riders on the steep punchy hills.

And then the wheels came off the wagon, more specifically my pedal came off. An overlooked regular maintenance of my pedals had caused the body of my pedal to come detached from the spindle. The pedal body was still attached to the metal cleat on the bottom my cycling shoe and after removing it was I unable to reattach it to the spindle. I stood road side and watch riders I had passed a short while ago zip by offering words of encouragement.

Screw encouragement, what I need was a new set of pedals. Standing in the middle of the tall grass prairie of Kansas it didn’t seem very likely that a pedal was going to drop out of the sky. I was in fact up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle. To take it one step further I was now the one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

It was time to HTFU. I could do this. Only 30 miles to the 100 mile check point

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If you made it this far in the blog, you are probably saying to yourself, “I though cycling was supposed to be fun.”

No doubt cycling is fun. If it wasn’t we would not have seen the boom in cycling this year during COVID. In fact according to an article in the LA Times urban bike use is up 21% in 2020, the Rails to Trails Conservancy has seen trail use skyrocket by 110% and swing into any bike shop and you will see quickly that there aren’t that many bikes for purchase due to the run on new bikes.

For the longest time I have belonged to the small tribe of people who know the freedom and joy a bike brings. I am happy to see that tribe grow. Within my tribe there is even a smaller tribe (though it is growing too) that gets a thrill out pushing themselves beyond what most would consider normal on the bike.

Interesting the tribes of cycling tend to embrace cliches as mantras and a way to identify each other. Whether it’s the ones I used above in my opening paragraphs or to embellish my stories post ride when I talk of “dropping the hammer” and “riding on the rivets” to bring back the break, the cliches exist. They act as a way for one fellow cyclist to identify another, to create a sense of cool and intended or not to alienate those who aren’t in our tribe.

This year I joined another tribe and quickly learned that we too have a whole host of cliches designed to motivate, give hope and encouragement. I always thought of myself and other cyclist in my tribe to be tough, but quickly learned no one hardens the fuck up like the cancer community.

Once the word is out that you’ve been diagnosed with cancer you are quickly labeled a warrior, a fighter and inspirational. For some this doesn’t sit so well and before I was diagnosed with cancer this year I often thought it felt a bit dramatic. Now, I am not so sure. Once I heard those words, “you have cancer”, I quickly found myself grabbing every cliche out there and attaching it to myself like a comfort blanket and suit of armor all rolled into one. This wasn’t a fucking pedal falling off my bike. This was my the cells in my neck and throat growing out of control and crowding out my healthy cells. For Pat Benatar Love is Battlefield for me my body was a battlefield and my tumor on my neck was literally the Battle of the Bulge.

Pat Benatar - Love Is A Battlefield - Amazon.com Music

So when do cliches help and when do they harm? For me and I think for many with cancer, they provide a bit of fantasy for us to hold on to in a time of uncertainty and uncontrollable fear. If a person can imagine themselves as some type of strong leather clad sword wielding warrior who despite tough odds is standing up to fight another day, then I say go with it if it makes getting through the chemo or another round of radiation a bit easier.

Let’s pull back and look at it from another point of view. Cliches like stereotypes can be, intended or not, hurtful and demeaning. That same person you call brave, a true warrior and an inspiration to others as they battle cancer may feel a ton of pressure an anxiety when you drop those labels on them. There is actual research that those cliches that we often think of as being supportive and encouraging are actually inappropriate and anxiety inducing.

I would like to think I am a fighter and a warrior but the reality is I can’t fight my cancer. Punching myself repeatedly in the neck is not going knock my cancer out.

In the end I’m glad I am inspiration and that you are rooting, praying and thinking about me and every other person who has cancer. I would ask that you take it one step further. Forgo the cliche statements and take action and help make a difference.

Donate to cancer research
“Let me know if you need anything.” act on that cliche. Most people are too proud to actually ask for help so instead do something for them without being asked.
Get your vaccines and make sure your family does too. The HPV vaccine greatly reduces the risk of cervical, anal, penile and oral cancer. Flu shots not only reduce your risk of the flu but keep people with compromised immune systems safe.

Wrapping this up and probably the only thing you can think about is, “Enough of this cancer shit. Did you finish the DK 200?”

Hell yeah I did. I reach deep into my “suitcase of courage”, rode 30 miles on one pedal, got a new set of pedals from my support crew at mile 100 and then engaged in a 100 mile sufferfest while “deep in the pain locker” in to a headwind. That shit was easy compared to cancer. The Dirty Kanza has a finish line. Cancer always has a what’s next.