Epic Reflections
I wanted to try to say something about the race as a whole, but as one might expect, the Epic is just a little too much to try to wrangle into a reasonable amount of words. Even this short series of reflections has rambled on to a length that some might find more tedious than the length of the race itself. So TLDR: the Delta Epic was a phenomenal experience and without question the coolest thing I’ve ever done on a bike. For those who want to keep reading, I’ve tried to collect and reflect on a few moments that really stood out to me from this year’s race.
Riding in the Moonlight
I came to this race fully anticipating that it was going to whoop my ass. This ride was just so much longer than anything I’d done before that I had steeled myself against the idea that it was going to be 30+ hours of pain and effort. If I’m being honest, I also expected to be kind of bored. After all, a farm field is a farm field right? And we were going to be seeing a hell of a lot of those.
Boy was I surprised then when we swooped down the steep gravel descent into the first bit of real delta with the stars twinkling overhead and the fields almost glowing around us. By the time we got up onto the levee I felt utterly immersed in this moonlit world of hazy trees and glowing fields, riding into the tunnel of light created by my headlight. After a short break on the levee to grab a snack and relieve ourselves, me and the friends I was riding with realized that we didn’t really need even those headlights, and proceeded to ride for the next almost hour using just the light of the moon. This moonlit opening was the perfect entree into the understated beauty of the Delta. This is going to sound corny, but the English teacher in me was so moved by what I was seeing that I had to recite the poem “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins to my friends to express what I was seeing and feeling around me.
Sunrise and the Ditch
As a parent of small kids, I’ve done an awful lot of night riding to avoid riding at hours when the kids need me to be dad. I’ve never ridden through a night before though and it was definitely a crazy experience to spend that much time riding in the dark. When the sun first really started to peek out from behind the horizon, I felt almost reborn and totally revitalized. It created a great moment to stop and think for a minute on the fact that I had already accomplished quite a lot and was making serious progress towards my goal of finishing this beast.
Of course, almost immediately after sunrise my friend Mike and I found ourselves on Bob Johnson road with the infamous ditch. When we got there we came upon a pile of riders all trying to sort out just how they were going to get across this thing, with one rider already standing about thigh deep in the water. The thing that was most memorable about this scene was all of the riders who were there helping each other out and trying to get each other’s bikes (and bodies) across as dry as possible. Mike and I made it across with dry feet using our bikes as a combination of pole vault and walker. The grassy path after the ditch made for some familiar riding as we spend a lot of time riding terrible (but beautiful) grassy levees in the areas outside of New Orleans. Again, I felt a burst of confidence knowing that we had passed a major hurdle of the route.
The Dogged Detour
After sleeping a few hours in Indianola, Mike and I set back out on the route and were riding pretty well into the second night. In fact, I was feeling pretty great after a quick water top off at the Sharkey Country Club. Unfortunately a couple miles south of the SCC in the aptly named “Dogwood Landing” we ran into a pack of dogs that simply would not clear out. Mike is a veterinarian who has done a fair amount of work in areas where loose dogs are common, and he was feeling pretty spooked by this group. We tried to head toward them to ride through, but they converged on us pretty quickly and we had to muster the energy for a sprint retreat. We finally got away from them after a quarter mile or so, but were feeling pretty defeated and kind of spooked. We took a look at google maps and saw that there was a road that would connect us to some gravel along a retention pond and decided to give that a go. Unfortunately, as we started turning onto that detour road we were met with a pack of over 10 loose dogs that were not at all happy we were there and staged yet another hasty retreat. Another look at google maps showed that our only other option to get around the original pack of dogs was going to be close to a 10 mile detour through the town of Anguilla. Reluctantly, we set off on this detour which did manage to get us south of the dogs, but had us feeling a little rattled and kind of shook our confidence.
The Delta’s Kindest Motorist
Sometime after the Delta National Forest (and that seemingly interminable, dead straight road that headed straight northeast into the headwind) we were heading into a cotton field and around a little bend when a truck came barreling towards us. He made a close pass that, while not great, probably wouldn’t register as my closest pass on a normal 4 mile commute in New Orleans. I remember making some snide comment to Mike about how the guy was kind of a jerk and must be real self-important or something like that and then was ready to forget about the incident completely. Shockingly though, about a minute later, we hear a car coming from behind us which seems crazy to have seen two cars so close together in such a remote place. As he pulls alongside us, we realize that it’s the same guy who just close passed us, and I start to get nervous. Is he mad that we’re here? Is he going to chew us out for riding on the roads through his farm? We assumed that whatever it was it couldn’t possibly be good. When he rolled down his window and turned off the car though, the first thing out of his mouth was, “I’m so sorry y’all.” He then proceeded to tell us about how he had broken down and had just gotten the truck running and wasn’t paying the best attention when he passed us. He said he felt terrible he passed us that close and wanted to come and apologize. As someone who has been fighting a two year long battle with grumpy neighbors over a bike lane in my neighborhood, this apology was so foreign to me that it almost didn’t register what it was he was trying to say to us. Once I came to my senses I thanked him for his apology and we rolled on, me with a little more faith in humanity than I had before.
Bentonia Hills and the Manual Double
By the time we got to Satartia and could see the treeline of the beginning of the hills, we were ready for the Delta part of the epic to be done. The loose gravel was starting to get to us and dampen our spirits a little bit and we were starting to feel like we just weren’t getting anywhere. As we sat at the Satartia snack shack and ate our doritos and drank our coke though, I knew we had one last challenge to get past, which was getting up those hills that we had been seeing grow closer over the last few miles. Now, I am a person who actually likes climbing, despite the fact that I’m not terribly good at it. I’m also a heavier human which tends to be tricky when gravity is working against you. Fortunately though, as we approached the hills, I had my secret weapon at the ready. In preparation for this final climb out of the Delta (as well as a strong desire to not have to walk) I had bolted a mountain bike 22 tooth ring to my Deore triple crankset. No derailleur, just the ring. A real manual double. I had even practiced my “kick the chain down off the 1x ring onto the little guy below. So when we got to that first steep gravel kick I gave my chain a little flick of the heel and spun my way straight up the climb with absolutely no trouble whatsoever. I sure felt clever as hell as I made easy work of a couple of those climbs that would otherwise have been real kicks to the teeth after that many miles. In fact, I felt so fresh that rolling through those hills felt almost like being on a normal bike ride.
The End
I have to say that I really wasn’t sure I would finish the epic. My longest ride before this one was only 160 miles and that had been all on roads. I absolutely love adventure riding, but I had definitely never strung together an off-road route even close to this one in length. As I mentioned before with the climbing, I’m also a bigger person (especially in the cycling world, I’m someone that lots of folks would consider to be on the fatter side of the weight spectrum) and I’ve sometimes let that fact about myself dominate the way that I perceive my own abilities. There have definitely been spaces within the cycling world where I don’t feel like I should be there. I’m grateful for an event like the epic, where the vibe is pure encouragement from the fastest person on down through the last place finisher (which happened to be me), and meeting the goal of tackling the course is the thing that matters most. Rolling up to the Blue Front reminded me that I’m strong and I can do some pretty tough shit. Thank you so much to the folks who put this amazing race on and to the crazy humans who race it and make it the incredible community that it is. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity to have been tested and found capable.
