BWR Arizona – a sick day for a sick day 

I am a big believer in the seasons of life. We all have sequences where things happen to us in cyclical ways. And I am not just talking about birthdays, anniversaries or holidays. I am talking about the less definite moments, feelings and vibrations which come rolling around year after year. 

I have a couple of these signifiers, but the most reliable one is getting colds in February or March. Without fail, it chases me down and gets me as the window of winter starts to shut. 

I thought I could maybe get away from it living here in sunny Arizona, which I have called home since August. Yet, Thursday morning as I woke up two days before what was my first gravel race of the year at BWR Arizona, I was a prisoner of the season once again with a sore throat, congestion clogging me up, and a quickly building sense of disappointment that it has happened again. 

The cold built through Thursday and Friday morning was not much better. I went through as many cold medication options as I could, checked my temperature often, and monitored my lungs for a buildup of congestion. I skipped a ride Thursday and did an easy recon ride on Friday, keeping my power well below the normal pre-racing engine revving I like to do. Yet still heading to sleep Friday night before the race, I didn’t know if I would take to the start in the morning. Sickness, I have learned, is not something you can bully your way through in bike racing. 

When the alarm rang at 5:00 AM Saturday, thankfully, I felt immediate relief. My symptoms weren’t worse, they were the same. That’s all I needed to take a stab at it.  And oh boy, am I glad I did! In retrospect, BWR Arizona was a sick day for a sick day and it is the perfect building block for the season to come. 

There is something liberating in arriving at a race in sub-optimal shape. You only can feel it on the start line, with the adrenaline pumping and optimism slinking its way into your head, because there is room for you to put aside how you think it’s going to go or dwell on how bad it’s going to feel afterwards. 

It is the bliss of no expectations and intense presence. 

At BWR AZ, that wonderful feeling continued as the race mosey its way up the gradual paved climb to start the day. With the intensity turned down, I could feel my legs – “they feel alright” – I could breathe out of my nose – “couldn’t do that yesterday” – and I can fake my way through a few hours of racing – “I only have 50 miles of trail on deck.” Of course, racing does what racing does and the bliss of the first climb was immediately offset when the road turned downhill and a massive crash took out a dozen riders at 40 miles per hour. I didn’t see how the crash happened, thankfully, but it was one of those crashes that seems like it shouldn’t happen. In other racing I have done, 40 mile per hour downhills at the start of races are good times to eat, drink, and not fight for the front wheels. 

Yet the beginning of gravel races truly brings the worst out of the worst of people who would kill to be a few wheels further up the front so they get dropped slightly later in the race. Generally, this kind of behavior, the desperation of the pretenders as we could dub it, is what has fundamentally changed my opinion on separate starts for elites and age group riders. The elite group doesn’t even have to be extremely selective, it just needed to let those racing for different objectives (let’s call it age group prizes versus overall prizes) be disentangled from each other and the pecking order within the group to be firmer. 

Races like BWR Arizona should be able to have the ability to put a paved climb and descent at the beginning of the race. That construction makes for a good race dynamic to set the tone for the rest of the ride and, most importantly on this particular course, avoid early morning light shining in all the wrong places which is much more dangerous. Clearly, there is a movement towards separate starts and much has been said about the negatives, but from a safety perspective when the start number is above 500, it feels essential to have some stratification. 

Anyways, I didn’t crash and I chased on down the rest of the downhill which put me right at the back of a group of around 50 as the real extended climb began. Immediately that group shattered and I found myself weaving through the shrapnel as the big dogs ripped it up front. 

It was at this juncture, after the five minutes I spent at 400 watts, where that creeping optimism from the startline had to morph into realism about what my capacity is on that given day. Normally, I tend to smash through that realism and fly too close to the sun, but I knew I had a firm governor to manage and blowing my wad in the first two hours of what was going to be a six hour effort. Instead of matching the top climbing talent, the task was now finding the right folks to get dropped with. 

Ultimately the group found me as much as I found it with about eight of us forming over the crest of the first pitch. That group of 8 rolled for a bit, picked a few riders up from the front group and a few surging riders from the rear, and then blew up again on the off-road section of the climb at the top. I used this as an opportunity to regroup, again using my illness as a means to reconfigure my race plan, and take in my favorite views in the whole area far above the Sonoran Desert floor, before pinning it down the chaotic double track that is much slower if you are cross-eyed from effort. 

From there, it was an onslaught of technical riding for a couple of hours. I could be specific about the micro dramas, passes, and other intricacies. However, to explain some of it I would have to explain it all of it and that wouldn’t be time well spent, so I’ll just say the next three hours went well enough to think about a late race charge as I tracked down a flying Sofia Gomez-Villafane through the McDowell Mountain Park. 

Ultimately, the health timer started to ding at four hours in as a cough began and congestion started to settle in my chest. It was one of those feelings where I could see vague images of what my future might look like if I pushed through the symptoms and the picture wasn’t good. Prudence, thankfully won again. 

In the last two hours I kept the effort low enough to keep the coughing at bay and the power consistent while I sauntered through the rest of the course on my own thinking about the day, thinking about what I could take away from the day. In the end, I came away with 28th place in a strong field after a consistent day of power and strong technical riding. I could surely ride the first climb harder and close the race with more effort and taking a different approach to pacing gave me the smoothest race I have had in years. 

Food for thought from a sick day for a sick day. 

Away from my ride, the race stood out as a truly phenomenal, one-of-one course that is one of the best in the business. 

The event itself perhaps leaves something to be desired. Stagecoach Village in Cave Creek is a fairly milktoast start venue and the tiny size and high wealth of the town leads to a scattered feeling of the racers on the startline. What’s more, BWR has something of a professional feel that borders on corporate which certainly has rubbed folks the wrong way. 

Yet, if you put that aside, the biking itself is unimpeachably fun. I went into detail on the preview, you can read that here, but racing the course underscores how relentless the challenge amongst gorgeous unique ecology and a surface that is exhilarating to ride once you get a sense of how it moves under your tires. 

BWR Arizona is one of the rare gravel races that exists in the extremes. Rather than focusing on gravel roads for the majority of the race, it goes effortlessly from pavement to trail making for a medley that is dynamic and explosive in a way that other races aren’t. While it is one for the riders who lean on technical expertise, the course is a fantastic early season test for any type of rider looking to get a dry run in for later season objectives, while also escaping colder climates in favor of sun and a damn hard ride.