Last week I mentioned that the Canadian Gravel Nationals were cancelled after the elite men’s podium had already finished, and here’s the story from the guy who would have been the winner:
I honestly did not expect this degree of introspetion:
Posting on social media, in my new role as a privateer, is a challenge. Although Ventum is my main sponsor, I have other great sponsors supporting my calendar, and based on some of the contracts that I have signed with these sponsors, I have to fulfill a certain amount of posts and meet a number of social media obligations per month/quarter of the year. This, to me, is the closest my life feels to work (I know, I am very lucky). Work that I, at this moment, have limited time for. A part of me feels bad not committing the adequate time and creativity to these posts; I dislike doing bad work. Another part of me thinks; “just make the post quick” as it’s a great way to subsidize doing something that I love. And another part of me gets depressed at the fact that deep down, I know that the majority of the things that I am putting out there are only contributing to the vast cesspool of vanity, human decline, and inauthenticity that is social media.
Jeez.
And that’s before he even gets to the racing!
I went to a dark place in those final kilometers. Mental battles were fought, time stretched on, I lived lives, and although I put my hands up in celebration, they quickly came back down after I crossed the line. I rode directly to the shade and lay down. I was spent. I hadn’t gone that deep in a long time. For 20 minutes, I sat there. People occasionally came and brought me water. Others asked me “what was it like to win on Puy d’homme,” a journalist asked if he could ask me questions. To all of them I grimaced, said little, and just suffered. I wasn’t even happy that I had won, I was just wrecked. Then, in my haze, someone came up to me, and told me the race was canceled.
Jeez.
And what ushered him to this dark place? Canada’s perverse obsession with equity, that’s what:
But this is Canada. I love this country. We are one of the most accepting, and welcoming places on earth, and you feel that when you come here, however sometimes we let our desire for equity get in the way of reality. In what is a painful example of this, an official explained to me that because the other categories had been impacted by the race cancellation, and there could not be a winner in those categories, there could also not be an elite men’s winner.
To wit:
I did use AI to make the Sobbing Gravelista, but I also lazily pasted it onto an existing image collage-style, so technically it’s still DIY.
Of course here in West Greeland we don’t go in for that “equity” crap. Here it’s about working with what you’ve got, regardless of whether it’s the fortune you inherited, the natural talent you were born with, the work ethic you cultivated by watching others you admire and respect, or simply the heady mélange of entrepreneurialism and stupidity that compels a certain type of American to do stuff like attempt to rob a Jack In The Box restaurant. You might even say this sort of rugged individualism is what the Spirit of America is all about, and it’s no coincidence that Gravel Cycling™ was invented in America, because that’s what the Spirit of Gravel is all about too:
In my mind the race should not have been canceled. I empathize with Jon and the organizers for making the decision that they made and understand why they did it, but their decision to cancel touches on something that I wrote about for Traka and Santa Vall. In gravel, I believe, there is an understanding that you signed up for this. At Traka I lost both bottles with 80km remaining in the race and at one point, when I asked a course marshal for water, he said “sorry no outside feeding.” I just had to deal with it; I had to ride slower, I had to debate whether I should drop out, and I had to solve the problem myself. I love that. Gravel is more of a test against yourself than it is against others. You are responsible for getting yourself home. Those who partook should have been more self-sufficient, and those that organized should have told them that they had been warned.
They say that deep inside every Canadian there’s an actual American struggling to get out*, and it sounds like he revealed his by turning himself inside out during that race only to get nothing in return because equity.
*[To my knowledge absolutely nobody says this.]
Then again, he should have known what he was getting into in the first place, because that race’s logo practically screams “welfare state:”
That doesn’t evoke bicycle racing so much as it does standing on a really long line and filling out 17 forms in order to receive an essential service of some kind.
As for me, I started the weekend by riding my own personal Gravel Nationals:
But unlike the thwarted Canadian gravelista now suffering from a case of championship blueballs, I went to the exact opposite of a dark place, which is a sunny, deer-filled meadow:
And by Sunday I’d dispensed with the gravel altogether and found myself perched upon a pink bicycle with impossibly narrow tires:
Sure, the bike was a little bit uglier, and so was the wildlife:
Sorry, turkeys, but it’s true:
However, the ride was no less enjoyable for it. When you’re on an old bike (or a bike people mistake for being old, like a Rivendell) on a heavily-trafficked Fred route you’ll occasionally get “Good for you!”-type comments and gestures from other riders, like you’re the “special” kid in class who was exposed to too much lead paint. But if anything I feel like I’m at a considerable advantage over them. For example, on a climb, I found myself among a group of riders, one of whose hydrolic dick breaks were rubbing audibly. Now I have no problem riding an old, dirty bike with paint that looks like crusty Pepto-Bismol, but I have little tolerance for sounds that shouldn’t be there, and the melancholy hum those brakes were making would have turned me inside out like that Canadian guy–especially on a climb, where the psychological effect of a rubbing brake is particularly devastating.
Speaking of which, at some point somewhere I believe someone commented on the position of my rear brake’s quick release:
[When I said I have no problem riding an old, dirty bike I really meant it.]
The reason for this is that it allows you to easily adjust your brake in either direction while riding and without having to fiddle with the barrel adjuster. For example, if the brake is rubbing on a climb you can open it up a little more, and if the roads are wet and you lose a millimeter or two of brake pad due to the grit you can close it a little more too, which you can’t do if the quick release is already in the fully closed position like you’re “supposed” to have it. Plus, if you switch between wheels with slightly different rim widths it gives you a little extra adjustability.
So who’s the turkey now?