Vermont Overland Grand Prix

Executive Summary

A 51-mile gravel road race that uses five sections of Vermont's "Ancient Roads."  Based on my drive before and after, I'm sure it was achingly scenic, but I only looked at the road ahead of me. Flatted near the finish and lost 35 places, to finish  101st in 3:39:59. The winner took only 2:42:47. 

The Race

Maybe I'm getting blase about these gravel-road races.

The Vermont Overland Grand Prix was epic. The roads, ancient, hard-packed dirt, or modern paved, were all just tremendous. The event vibe was the best of any race I've been to in years.  But no one thing stands out as being mind-searingly memorable. Maybe that's good--no near-death experiences, no blinding rainstorms, no black depression of wanting to drop out and ride back to the car. Yeah, I'll go with that!

Anyway, the first edition of the Vermont Overland Grand Prix ran over a 51-mile single loop, with five (?) sections of Vermont's "Ancient Roads."  Through a quirk in Vermont law, any public right-of-way that ever existed remains in the public until the town formally turns it back to property owners. Some of these roads, known only to the locals, date back to the 18th century. And they are not roads that you're taking your Subaru Forester down, by any stretch of the imagination. 

Amusingly, it turned out I knew the promoter, Peter Vollers, from my Cornell Cycling team days, twenty five years ago. 

Sandra and I drove up from Falls Church the day before, and stayed at a lodge in Killington, about 35 minutes from the start. She indulged my pre-race parking/navigating paranoia, and we pulled into the race parking lot more than two hours before the 9 AM start. 

For a first year event, the more than 300+ entries made for an impressive start line. Unlike Hilly Billy Roubaix and Iron Cross, almost no one was on a mountain bike. The race shut down the main street of Woodstock Vt.  for the entire day. After the national anthem we rolled out, and a mile later we left the pavement behind on a wide, hard-packed dirt road littered with wheel-eating potholes. I watched several guys endo into the ditch almost immediately. Ouch. As soon as the gradient turned up I found myself drifting backwards out of the front group. I may have made a mistake in not going harder early, but it wasn't like others were  impeding my progress, either. Five miles into the race we hit the first ancient road, and I was off the bike pushing. I was overgeared (34x28), and the recent rain made the rocks pretty slick. On the descent, despite the warning signs, a guy a mountain bike nearly creamed me, as I was held up briefly by even slower guys ahead of me. 

The next 40 miles were a blur--pass guys on the road downhills, and then lose ground on the ancient roads. As usual, my back got progressively worse. In the last hour I found my rhythm, and actually started to pass riders until I flatted in a stream crossing with about six miles left. The entire bike was coated with black smelly grit-encrusted mud, and I sprayed down the tire with Gu from my waterbottle to try to clean it. What a  mess. I was running latex tubes with Stans, left over from Hilly Billy Roubaix, but obviously I didn't have enough Stans, since the leak didn't seal. After the repair I was completely paranoid about flatting again.

Minutes later we descended through a hay field, onto the pavement, crossed a covered bridge, and then minutes later i was sprinting though downtown Woodstock. One last steep uphill and I was across the line. My flat cost me 12 minutes and forty places, only good enough for 101st place. I've flatted way too many times in these races recently.

Pissed off just after repairing the flat. The photo shows a rather tame section of an ancient road. Photo credit Ryan Dunn: http://www.rwdunn.com/

Heart rate and speed. The big notch at 190 minutes is the flat tire change.  Averaged about 165bpm 

Enjoying a recovery beverage brewed by the race sponsor at a restaurant on the finishing straightaway.

Equipment

• Continental cyclocross speed tires @ 65psi with Vittoria latex tubes and 1/2 a bottle of 2-month-old Stans. Less than ten miles of the course was paved, and even on the smooth hardpacked roads, the tires were not a liability. 
• 34x28 was not low enough. Some of the "ancient roads" would have been ridable with lower gearing.

Links

• The event page
• 2014 Results
• My performance on Strava  
• More photographs from Ryan Dunn, one of the moto escorts
• Information on Vermont's "Ancient Roads:" http://www.vtroads.com/index.htm and an article in Yankee magazine that explains some of the interesting legal issues about them