It’s 08:42 on Saturday morning and I’m sitting on the toilet of our RV about 25m from the start line of Rattlesnake Gravel Grind. The black-and-white stripes of my new Castelli jersey are draped over the counter to my left. T-18 minutes till race day.
“I got some rust on my Chevy but it's ready to roll…It ain't a smooth ride, life, it's a winding road….Yeah, it might be gravel, but it feels like gold” - these lyrics are blaring from the loudspeaker on the start line. I double-take, did this country song just say “It might be gravel but it feels like gold”?!? [ed. it did, here’s the link to the song.]
I shake my head and wonder how the hell I got here. I’m sitting in an RV, somewhere deep in rural Texas a handful of minutes from lining up for a gravel race. I have a custom Castelli jersey in the colours of my local football team to my side. I smile, flush the toilet and roll to the start line…
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It’s Tuesday lunchtime when we leave the town of Stillwater, Oklahoma behind us and head for Sweetwater, Texas. What are the odds of having both town names ending in -water? I’m leaving Mid South Gravel with a smile and a promise I’ll be back next year.
The drive is long. Some six-hours across the straightest, most boring roads you’ve ever come across. I’d heard stories about road-tripping in the States, the reality is dull. I’m sitting next to my friend Chris Mehlman who I’ve spent the last week with. We talk about everything from race tactics, to life after cycling, to searching the highlights of every small town we travel through on Wikipedia.
What awaits us in Texas, we don’t know.
Rattlesnake Gravel Grind is a relatively new bike race. 2024 is it’s third edition and the whole event is put on in support of the local Volunteer Fire Departments.
The main question we don’t know the answer to is accommodation. Both Chris and I have been going back and forth with David, the organiser. He’d managed to sort us an RV to stay in for the week. There’s a mixture of excitement and nerves. Neither of us had stayed in an RV before.
We pull into the campsite, some 10-miles from the nearest town of Sweetwater and David meets us with a smile. “This is where the start/finish line is”, he says as he points to a currently empty spot of asphalt about 25m from our RV.
See Instagram link below for our Privateer Cribs video…
The campsite is quiet. We’re a few days out from the race. The Wednesday morning we have a road ride organised with David and one of his friends. We turn up to the agreed location and along with a handful of riders, there’s a farmer/rancher to escort us out of town.
Little did we know, but this was to be the start of the most hospitable weekend perhaps of our lives. There are so many bits I’ve got to glaze over to keep the story going, like how David had organised a cooler to be dropped in the middle of nowhere on a gravel trail so we had water.
We wake up on Thursday and the campsite is slowly starting to fill with RVs. Chris and I have RV envy as newer and shinier models pull into the park. Our hours are spent researching how much they cost, how feasible they’d be and whether we could afford one.
It’s Thursday, still 48hrs or so before the race kicks off, but the organised group ride we head on has plenty of takers. We chat to riders who have been in the sport for years, others who this is their first event. It’s a community feel.
Race Day..
So where were we? Right, sitting on the toilet listening to country music. This race is a very different affair to the Mid South just one week earlier where riders were battling for every inch on the start line and warming up on trainers.
The Star Spangled Banner comes over the loudspeaker, helmets are removed and hands placed over hearts. I stand there awkwardly, the only Brit, not been too sure what to do with myself.
Three, two, one…let’s go racing.
We roll out and I immediately crap myself - metaphorically. My Wahoo shuts down. I’m not being a Princess who needs my power numbers - I need that Wahoo. Gravel races aren’t marked, you rely on the GPS unit on your handlebars for directions. A quick reboot, a minor heart attack and we’re good to go.
The race starts into a long, straight, headwind. I immediately start racing like a junior and attack downhill, into a headwind. The racing like a junior thing will come out a lot in this article.
Unsurprisingly, nothing happens and the whole group sits on my wheel. We’re all waiting for the first climb, a steep kicker some 25km in. Chris and I plan to attack there.
I try a few stupid moves but accept nothing will stick until the climb. The second the gradient goes up, I go to the front and drive the pace. The goal here isn’t to go solo, just to take a small group away. After all, there are still some 90-miles to go.
We get a group and ride.
This group of twelve or so will largely stay the same for the next half of the race. The course is great: it twists in and out of ranch land that is usually closed off to riders, it goes past windfarms, gravel roads, sand and tarmac. There’s just nowhere it can split.
I continue to race like an inexperienced junior. I’m getting bored sitting in the group and I’m trying too hard to force something. A whiff of crosswind and I put it in the gutter. A slight uphill and I try to attack. Nothing sticks.
I’ve got a good chance of winning from here. I know there’s a steep climb coming up towards the end, and I think I can split the group there. I know that others will fatigue as the race goes on, I’m just being too impatient.
The split doesn’t happen on the steep climb, but 10km or so before. The defending champion, Justin McQuerry moves up on the right quickly. We haven’t pre-ridden this part and don’t know what’s coming, but the urgency he moved at showed that it’s something.
We turn a hard, ninety-degree right-hander into a grassy double track through ranch land. Justin leads, I’m fourth wheel. We immediately get a gap. It’s not overly technical, but it’s fast and there’s plenty of place to go wrong… (see video from 2:40:00)
Justin flats and pulls over, I move up a place and check my shoulder. We’ve got a good gap, Justin is unfortunately out of the race with a flat that’ll take him minutes to fix. We go.
I put a dig in. As we exit the ranch land, we have four of us. This is the race winning move, we ride.
The gap immediately goes out. Barring any incident, the race winner comes from this group. We head closer to the first climb. One guy puts pressure on through the technical section in the lead-up, but I stick to his wheel like glue.
The second the climb starts, I go to the front and ride. I don’t attack, just sit at an awkwardly high pace that I know will cause people issues. The climb is steep, nothing crazy, but steep enough. It’s loose underfoot too. You can’t get out of the saddle or you lose traction.
I continue to put pressure on, and according to Strava, I crest the top ten seconds faster than anyone else. I look behind and see Chris just behind, I sit up and wait.
There’s a long way to go, still some 50km. Trying to maintain a 10-second gap would be miserable, and futile. We join together, we push on. We both know what the other wants, we both know the goal.
We ride solid. It’s not easy, it’s not full gas. We don’t take any risks on the descents or single tracks. We pull turns, we’re honest with each other.
With a kilometre and a half to go, I jump. Chris is an incredible ultra-racer, a pure diesel engine. If the race was another 100km long, he’d beat me by minutes. In a race that’s going to be won with a short burst of power, it favours me.
I cross the line solo - let’s not talk about the almost crash I had over cooking the final corner by myself.
I smile. It’s my first Gravel win. Hell, it’s the first time I’ve won a bike race in years.
I embrace Chris as he crosses the line some ten seconds back. It’s been a good day out in Texas.
The evening is spent hanging around the campsite and enjoying the other side of gravel. There’s no need to pack up quickly and head to the airport like my road days, instead it’s time to kick back and enjoy the event.
From the second you arrive in Sweetwater, you are welcomed into the local community like a long lost friend. Everyone was happy. From the ranch owners who opened up their land, to the live music that played late into every night.
There’s some gravel races that are going the commercial route, and while they’re great for their own reasons, Rattlesnake was different. However soft it sounds, it left you feeling warm inside.
The evening ended with a live rattlesnake around my neck, and a cowboy hat on my head.
When in Texas.
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The Rattlesnake Gravel Grind may not be the biggest bike event you’ve ever heard of, nor will it have the strongest start list, but it’s one that I’m adding to my calendar every year. The phrase “spirit of Gravel” gets thrown around a lot in a cynical way. As we drive away from Sweetwater I can’t help but think that this is how and why Gravel started. It’s events like this that have made the sport boom.
Whether you’re racing fifteen or a hundred miles, we all kick back and watch the same live music afterwards, exchange stories and smile.
A trip to Sweetwater, Texas will not be wasted. it’ll make you smile, it’ll make you laugh, it’ll remind you why you fell in love with bike racing.
I’d like to take this moment to say thank you to David, and the whole Sweetwater community. It’s one hell of a bike race that you have.
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I’ve added both a paid subscription and a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link to this post. As the year progresses, I’m planning on building this blog and putting out articles which I’ve always wanted to write but for whatever reason, haven’t wanted to pitch.
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Fantastic result and another great insight.
Congratulations on the win Joe! Another great read too.