The Crusher 2023 (MS175)

Pre-Race Tribulations

As I watched my crank and pedal fly off my bike and into the ferns, I thought "That's not supposed to happen." It was t-minus seven days and I was on my last ride before tapering off for the race. Thirty miles into the forest on the local 231 trails, I heard a very disconcerting noise. Kind of a rhythmic knocking of expensive plastic against even more expensive plastic. Turns out that my crankarm was impacting my chainstay on every pedal stroke. After a certain number of impacts, the crank would be de-fernestrated.

I'm not quite skilled enough to pedal one-footed with flat pedals, so I reattached the crankarm with my small multitool and rode until it popped off again. Then I repeated the process until I got home. Two local bike shops diagnosed the problem as having too short of a spindle for the frame. Why exactly this became a problem so suddenly after riding the bike for two years, I'll never know. The shops said I needed a new crankset, but they couldn't get the part in time for the race. I was devastated. I had spent a socially inappropriate amount of time and money upgrading the bike for this race. It had more carbon fiber than a Fisher Price outlet store. It had a lower BMI than a mid-2000's Abercrombie model.

Since my friends had an inconvenient habit of riding their bicycles on the weekends, my borrowing options were slim. I eventually settled upon a bike that belonged to my beautiful, kind and patient fiancee, who tolerates/enables my first-world hobblems. (Love you, pbgo). That bike was a Specialized Rockhopper, women's small frame with 2x8 gearing. I transferred my Jones bars to her stem (after practically giving birth to the ESI Chunky XL non-lockon-grips -- removing them was harder than actually finishing the Crusher) and swapped saddles. After a couple short rides on the Rockhopper, I eventually came to a place of inner peace and acceptance. I knew I would be hours slower, but my biggest fear was having a catastrophic mechanical and having to walk all night to get out.

I had heroic visions of myself as a less-fit, more-bearded Liz Sampey, who trail-ran the last thirty-five miles of the 2018 Colorado Trail Race with a loaded bike after her rear hub went supernova. But to be honest, I would probably make it to the finish line just in time for the 2024 Crusher to start. In an attempt to make light of the situation, I posted on the Crusher Facebook group asking for inspirational tales of people finishing the race on unique or pre-modern rigs. Some commenters obliged with tales of BMX bikes and tandems, but even more offered to inspect my bike before the race or even lend me one entirely. I was blown away by the kindness of the group toward a stranger and first-timer. Then two days before the race, I read a comment that prompted a double-take. An employee of Sports Rack in Marquette looked at my photos and said that they had the part I needed in stock. I would need to get there at 10:00 the next morning for them to replace the crankset on short notice -- no guarantees, but it looked like it would work. The next morning I loaded both bikes and left Traverse City at 05:00. While Ben and Evan performed their wrenching magic, I food-packed for the race and did some yoga at Harlow Park. A couple hours later, the doctor called and said "Congratulations, it's a girl!" Err, I mean, the shop said that my bike was ready. New favorite LBS status!

I swapped the bars and saddle back onto my bike (removing and reinstalling those recalcitrant grips again, I might add) and celebrated by biking through the drive-through at Dominos and picking up a large carb-loader's special. Now that the emotional crux of the past week was over, all I had to do was bike two hundred miles! The Race

Four o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake. The race doesn't start til 05:30 but it's "Christmas morning syndrome." I slam a couple pieces of pizza and a bottle of Tailwind, then head down to the campground to take a hot shower and loosen the muscles up.

The Velodrome Coffee van is set up and pulling shots, the sight of which fills me with irrepressible joy, especially since I had quit coffee for five days before the race. No matter what happens out there, the day is going to start on a very good note.

(Photo: Rob Meendering) As H-Hour nears, the racers queue up and trade fistbumps. As is tradition, the 906AT mastermind Todd cranks some Metallica. Then, as the first light of dawn broke, we roll out.

(Photo: Rob Meendering)

Writing about riding gravel roads can tend to be boring. Fortunately for this blog post, we were on "enhanced gravel." While much of the 202-mile route featured very user-friendly dirt roads, there were a good number of character-building segments.

(Photo: Olivia Cottom)

There was sand so deep that I would be riding downhill in my easiest gear and trying very hard to stay upright at 4mph, despite three-inch tires.

(Photo: Katy Stone)

There were forty-foot-long mud pits that spanned the entire ATV trail, with no way to assess how deep they were until you committed to riding them (at times, deeper than my hubs).

(Photo: Quinn Erickson)

There were slate rock gardens that inspired me to beseech the patron saint of sidewall protection for mercy. While these sections of "enhanced gravel" may have been small in terms of mileage, they were large in terms of time expenditure.

The format of the Crusher requires riders to take selfies at seven designated landmarks along the route. In 2023, these included

- a historic general store in the middle of nowhere (that was, of course, closed)

- a campground with a gloriously cold water spigot

- a national forest kiosk

- Laughing Whitefish Falls, which required a 155-step staircase to access.

- A quirky tourist trap sculpture museum, where benevolent supporters set up unofficial neutral aid station with a firepit and firewater

- A Lake Superior beach

- An organic roadblock on an ATV trail providing one last opportunity to hikeabike before the finish line  

Missing a checkpoint would require a racer to backtrack (I got a couple bonus miles on the North Country Trail at Whitefish in this manner). These checkpoints gave the race a more adventurous, scavenger-hunt feel. This paired well with the fact that the entire course was unmarked and required navigational vigilance via GPS.

Stopping to snap a checkpoint selfie provided an opportunity to reign in the inner racerchild for a brief minute and soak in the natural beauty of the course. To paraphrase a climbing aphorism: "The best mountain biker is the one having the most fun."

(Photo: Gregory Gentle)

The cutoff for the race was twenty-four hours, and my only goal was to finish before then. From my years of living out West, I had ridden several days in the twenty-hour range, but they were all within my stylistic comfort zone (techy singletrack with sustained climbing and hikeabike). The prospect of sitting on the saddle and pedalling all day was a bit daunting -- the only gravel race I had ever done was the Leadville 100 MTB.

Throughout the ride, I kept my heartrate and perceived exertion at a manageable level, never really "burning matches." Slow and steady. Much like multipitch climbing, my strategy to make time was to minimize my stopped time. A couple extra couple minutes at each unofficial aid station would add up over the course of the day. I also employed the Adam Sandler approach to liquid waste management.

Riding a 29+ rig instead of a narrower-tired gravel bike cost me time on the easy terrain, but allowed me to stay on the bike through the mud, stream crossings, sand and rocks. (There were only two segments that I couldn't ride, one super steep singletrack pitch that it appeared most people walked, and then a stretch of deep sand in the final ten miles). Being able to rally through that "enhanced" terrain provided a great morale boost as well. Overall, it probably would be faster to ride a gravel bike despite the increased hikeabike, but I think I had more fun with my three-inch tires.

(Photo: Rob Meendering) Nutrition and hydration went really well. The day before the race, I took a pound and a half of bacon and coated it in Tony's Creole Seasoning, baked it, then stored it on ice until the rollout. Eating a slice while riding provided an emotionally satisfying infusion of sodium. When I hit the general store in Chatham, I bought a package of hot dogs and ate them cold. (I also handed one like a baton to a bonking rider as I pulled up alongside him, which was a great memory). Other calories came from oatmeal creme pies, Sour Patch Kids, Butterfingers, Combos and Reeses-dipped pretzels. Along the way, neutral support crews graciously plied me with Coke, bananas and Slim Jims.

I never carried more than two liters of water at a time in my hydration bladder, which I kept in my Cleaveland Mountaineering frame bag with the hose routed up through my handlebars. In the five days leading up to the race, I had increased my water consumption to six liters per day (plus electrolytes), so I felt very well pre-hydrated, if that's really a thing.

When I hit the final ten miles, I felt a huge sense of relief. I figured that even if I had a catastrophic mechanical, I could still run the rest of the way with my bike and make it before the cutoff. Fortunately, that wasn't necessary. The last couple miles featured some of the worst sand of the route, plus plenty of deadfall to hop and branches to dodge. But I could almost feel the condensation dripping down the cans of the six-cooler community beer potluck that waited back at Otter Lake (I had stopped alcohol consumption five days before the race too).

I rolled across the finish line at 1:37 AM for a total of twenty hours and seven minutes on the bike. Todd was there to congratulate me and validate my checkpoint selfies. I got to place my finisher's green dot up on the roster. It was pretty cold (I had been seeing frost on leaves for the past three hours) so I rode up one last hill to the car and grabbed extra layers. I took a long hot shower (huge perk of the campground basecamp idea) and then demolished a freshly-grilled cheeseburger courtesy of the 906AT volunteers. Funny enough, the pH balance in my mouth must've been off from all that salted bacon and hot dogs or something, because my celebratory PBR tasted as hoppy as a double IPA! The basecamp afterglow was a really good scene, so I hung around til 03:00 to congratulate other finishers, then retired to the Hotel Honda for a couple hours of sleep before dawn. As I write this now, five days after the event, the post-race buzz is still going strong. I can almost walk down a flight of stairs without grimacing! (My derrierre, however, could serve as an advert for "recreational scolding.") I am very pleased with how the day went -- without exaggeration, it was type 1 fun the whole way.

On the drive home, I was making plans for next year's Crusher. Shoutout to my impromptu riding partners Russ, Eric, Mike, and Scott for keeping to the stoke level high. Finally, a huge thanks to the 906 Adventure Team nonprofit (feat. T-Pain himself) for providing an opportunity to dig deep and find grit.

Virtus tentamine gaudet -- Strength rejoices in the challenge.