 The start was incredibly hectic, a field full of racers who've hardly raced at all this year made for a very nervous peloton, and the first 20 miles were filled with crashes, surges, and bottlenecks. Going into the first pinch point, which was a narrow tunnel just a couple miles in, I found myself stuck behind a crash and spent more energy than I would have liked to catch back up to the front. Welcome back to another video. Today I'm going to be taking you through my race at this year's Belgian Waffle Ride Cedar City. I'm going to be getting into my ride data from the race, including my power numbers, my nutrition strategy, and I'm going to talk tactics. Okay, let's go ahead and get into it. For those of you who don't know, this race is part of a three-race series here in the US called the Triple Crown of Gravel. However, the other two races, which were slated to take place in San Diego and Asheville, were canceled this year, so Cedar City was the only BWR race on the calendar. BWR attracts some of the biggest names in US gravel racing, and this year was no exception. It also attracted fellow YouTuber Vegan Cyclist, and judging from the comments on his vlog from the day before the race, it seemed like people were ready for the ultimate showdown between Vegan Cyclist and Dillon Johnson. Yeah, well, he's already got you beat on the YouTube front because he doesn't sound like the human reincarnation of a calculator. Plus, Vegan Excuses is actually excuse number 39 on my list of excuses. Honestly, seems like the kind of dude I'd hang out with. The BWR Cedar City course was an interesting one. 125 miles, 75% of which was off-road. The race only had 6,000 feet of climbing, and the majority of that was on rolling hills that weren't too steep. However, at mile 107, you get a nasty 2.6 mile long climb with an 8% average grade, with some deep sand and steep pitches near the top. If you aren't paying attention, you could easily get off your line and have to walk here. After you descend off of this climb, you get a four-mile section of flowy yet somewhat rocky singletrack before hitting the bike path leading into the finish in downtown Cedar City. Cedar City is at an altitude of 5,800 feet with a high point on the course of over 6,500 feet, and while the altitude isn't anything too crazy, it was enough to affect my race strategy going in, especially as an east coaster coming from lower altitude without any time to acclimate. At this altitude, I was likely giving up around 3% of my aerobic power to competitors who were acclimated. Given this and the fact that the talent at this race was so deep, my plan going into the race was simple. Stay with the front group until that big final climb, and play it as conservatively as I could. No attacking off the front or going for a solo breakaway. Dude, you love to make these races as boring as your videos, don't you? Maybe you would have won if you had taken my advice. Attack during the neutral rollout at the start. If I was going to lose power due to the altitude, perhaps I could make it up by racing smart and staying patient. At least that's what I hoped. The sturt was incredibly hectic, a field full of racers who've hardly raced at all this year made for a very nervous peloton, and the first 20 miles were filled with crashes, surges, and bottlenecks. Going into the first pinch point, which was a narrow tunnel just a couple miles in, I found myself stuck behind a crash and spent more energy than I would have liked to catch back up to the front. It paid to be at the front, but I kept finding myself 20 or 30 riders back, which is not where I wanted to be. On the first major climb, which came about 20 miles into the race, I found myself about 25 riders back, and I could see the group start to splinter ahead of me, and I had to do a lot of work to pass riders and get back up to the front group. It didn't help that on the descent off of that climb, I crashed into a corner, and when I got back on my bike, I found my chain had come off. By the time I got it back on, I had work to do, but luckily I had other riders with me to help take up the chase for the front group. Within 15 minutes we had caught them, and shortly after that, the lead group of seven, which would spend the majority of the day together, was formed. This group included Keegan Swensen, Peter Stetna, Alexi Vermeulen, Griffin Easter, Ryan Standish, Eric Burner, and me. The selection to make the front group took about 38 minutes and required me to put out a normalized power of 320 watts. This is the point in most races where the front group starts to slow down. Everyone's made the selection, and it starts to sink in that they're still a long way to go. This was not the case here. At mile 40, we had another brutal push for 37 minutes, which required a normalized power of 302 watts. This was made more difficult by the fact that this section was extremely sandy and dusty, often with just two distinct lines, making it hard to draft. Sitting on the rider's wheel in front of us, we were constantly hitting rocks and holes at high speed, and there was no way to see them coming, because the dust kicked up by the rider in front was too thick. Fortunately, after this, we hit some road, and the pace did ease up a bit, and over the next hour and a half, I put out a normalized power of just 245 watts. We were still pulling through and working as a group to keep the speed high, but we took some time to lube our chains on the bike, which was absolutely essential on such a dusty course, and catch up on our nutrition. My nutrition strategy for this race was the same one that I used at the Sugarcane 200 and Shenandoah Mountain 100 with good success. It included one bottle per hour with two scoops of Flow Formula's drink mix, and one goo energy gel per hour. This was roughly 85 grams of carbohydrates per hour. This is the important part, though. Research shows that 60 grams per hour is the limit of how much fast carbs can be absorbed, even when large amounts of carbohydrates are ingested. However, combining different carbohydrate sources, such as glucose and fructose, have been shown to increase carbohydrate oxidation rates by 20 to 50 percent, because fructose can utilize a different transport pathway. So combining multidextrin and fructose in the right ratio could bump that absorption rate from 60 grams per hour to potentially 90 grams per hour. All the carbohydrates that I consumed during the race had that optimal 2 to 1 multidextrin to fructose ratio. Back to the race, though, even though we chilled out a little bit in the middle of the course, we still kept the speed pretty high. We worked well together as a group, and with 7 strong riders, we never slowed down too much. In fact, we did the first 100 miles of the race in just 4 and a half hours, which is an average speed of over 22 miles per hour. On gravel. Around mile 92, the pace started to pick up again with Griffin Easter, Eric Burner, and Peter Stetna all taking stabs at splintering the group. My legs were feeling pretty tosy at this point, and I just held on to the back of the group, hoping the pace would slow down soon. This hard stint late in the race lasted almost 10 minutes and required a normalized power of 308 watts to stay on. The only one to drop from the group after this big effort was Ryan Standish, and we found ourselves in a lead pack of 6, heading into the final big climb of the day. Immediately on the climb, Peter Stetna got to the front, and before too long, him, Keegan Swensen, and Alexi Vermeulen had a gap on me. At this point, really all I could do was ride my own pace up the climb, which at this point in the race was an average of 315 watts for a little over 16 minutes. I also hit my max heart rate for the race here, which was 183 beats per minute. Griffin Easter also pulled away from me on the climb, but I managed to keep him in sight, and he only had about 30 seconds on me going over the top. This meant that the battle for fourth place was not over. The downhill off this climb was a bit hairy with deep, sandy switchbacks and ruts, but I managed to get down it without too much trouble and with Griffin in sight. I put in a hard dig on the gravel section right after this descent, and managed to make contact with Griffin right before the single track. The single track was flowy, but also had a decent amount of rocks, making for a bumpy ride. If you were on a mountain bike, you probably wouldn't think much of it, but being on a gravel bike and having already raced 115 miles at this point, it took a lot of focus to ride it fast. I went into the single track ahead of Griffin and did my best to keep it fast and smooth. I wanted to ride the downhill sections as fast as I could, but I also didn't want a flat tire at this point in the race, so I kept my eyes peeled for sharp edge rocks. About halfway through the single track, I managed to get some distance between me and Griffin. Exiting the single track, I looked back and saw that I was completely clear, and all that there was to do now was to put my head down and crank as hard as I could on the bike path for five miles to the finish. I hit the finish line in six hours and 34 seconds, about five minutes back from Keegan and Peter in first and second, and about a minute and a half back from Alexi in third place. At the finish, we learned that Keegan had just won the race without a front brake, because it had gotten ripped off in a tangle at the start. Absolutely incredible ride from him, and if anyone was able to win this race without a front brake, it's definitely Keegan, because he's just that good technically. Alright, let's get into the numbers for the race. I had a normalized power of 266 watts for the whole race, a TSS or training stress score of 358, and an average speed of 20.6 miles per hour. Super happy with the top five finish here, especially given the strength of the field. Um, sorry dude, but who even remembers second, third, and so on places? Fourth place, last place, it might as well be the same thing. It's just like Ricky Bobby always said. Maybe next time try pedaling harder. This race has gotten me stoked to do the San Diego and Asheville race next year. If you're a gravel racer in the US, I definitely recommend checking out at least one of these events. It was super cool to meet vegan cyclists out there, and I also talked to a lot of people who watch my channel. It was great to meet all of you, and if you ever see me at a race, don't hesitate to come up and say hi. This is my last race of the year, and hopefully next year things can be back to normal so we can do this more often. Thanks for watching. If you want to stay up to date on my racing, the best way to do that is to follow me on Instagram. I also announced when I post new videos on there. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like, subscribe for weekly cycling videos just like this one, and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.