 The fight for the podium spots really started at mile 78, with the steepest climb on course. A 1.6 mile double track that hits a max gradient of 29%. Welcome back to the channel. This video is fueled by The Feed. For those that are unfamiliar, the Belgian Waffle Ride series is a North American gravel racing series, and while it doesn't get quite as much attention as the Lifetime Grand Prix, it still attracts some of the fastest U.S. and international gravel racers. In fact, BWR California is often one of the most stacked gravel races of the year. Wait a minute. Which part of Belgium is in California again? BWR North Carolina attracted its fair share of heavy hitters as well this year, with the likes of former World Tour Pro Nathan Haas, Adam Robersh, Fresh Off of His Win at Gravel Locos, Griffin Easter, Finn Gullickson, and more. BWR races are known for being under-biking races, not because they have a rule about what bike you have to ride, but because they design the course such that it encourages under-biking. The North Carolina course is a perfect example of this. The 130 mile or 210 kilometer route is 60% paved road, but then they throw in some of the roughest gravel descents in the area and four fairly significant single track sections. Yeah, choosing the right bike for this course is a real head scratcher. On top of that, the course features 14,000 feet or 4,200 meters of climbing, and some of these climbs get ridiculously steep, with sustained pitches of well over 20%. All of this makes it arguably the hardest BWR course. Luckily though, I had the home game advantage on my side because I live right here in Western North Carolina, less than 30 minutes from the starting line, and a lot of the roads used in the race are ones that I ride on a weekly basis. This also meant that I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted my bike setup to be. I went with my factor Oshawa gravel, which, by the way, needed a complete overhaul after the Unbound Mudfest. For tires, I opted for my usual 47 millimeter Pathfinder Pro tires. That may seem excessively wide for a course that is the majority pavement, but for the most part, the paved sections of the course are not where the race is won or lost, with the exception of the final climb at mile 118, but I'll get to that. Then my strategy was to go with a tire that would give me an advantage on the burly sections of the course, like the rough gravel descents and single track sections. I know these sections better than any of my competitors, so my plan was to make moves anytime it got technical. The only other major change that I made to the bike is I swapped out the 52 and 36 tooth chainrings that I used for Unbound, with 50 and 34 tooth chainrings, and an 11 to 34 tooth cassette in the back for a bit of an easier time getting up some of the steep climbs throughout the race. Honestly, some of the stuff they put in here is stuff that us locals never ride. The other big question mark for this race is how my legs would be feeling after doing the Unbound 200 just seven days earlier. One week is normally not enough time to fully recover from such a massive effort like Unbound, but a lot of the top contenders at this race were at Unbound as well, so at least we'd all be in the same boat. That being said, I completely shocked myself by getting my highest 20 minute power ever just four days after Unbound. You heard that right. This was completely unexpected. I was just doing a 10 minute threshold effort to open my legs up for BWR, and I felt so good at the 10 minute mark that I just decided to go another 10 minutes and ended up doing 402 watts for 20, although my heart rate was a bit depressed during this effort indicating that there was still a bit of fatigue. This is 11 watts higher than my previous best 20 minute power that I had set last summer. I don't know how this happened, but I wasn't going to question it, and I just hoped that my legs were going to feel this good on race day. Nah, I think you need to calibrate your power meter, man. I mean, that just sounds embarrassingly low, bro, come on, I do that on my easy days. Alright, I know that was a lot of setup, but I felt like the full context was needed before getting into this one. But with that, let's go ahead and get into how the race played out. The first major pinch point on course comes early at mile 8, and when I say pinch point, I'm talking about a 2 mile uphill single track section. Getting into this section in bad position could seriously jeopardize your race because probably the top 20 or so riders will be riding the whole thing, but the further back you get in the field, the more people will have to get off and run the steep switch back sections at which point you'll be losing a lot of time. Doing this, I tried to stay as close as I could to the front without being in the wind on the road leading into this section. This was easier said than done because attacks were already going here on the pavement and gaps were opening up. It was clear that everyone knew that the single track was coming and did not want to be the one caught out in 20th or 30th position, and these efforts to start the race required a normalized power of 330 watts for 18 minutes. As we approached the single track, I searched to the front and got the whole shot. If I could lead in the single track, I would be able to dictate the pace and keep from going too far into the red. After all, we were only 8 miles into a 130 mile race. That being said, looking back on it, I really didn't take it that easy doing another 332 watts NP for 10 minutes up the single track. But this opening climb of the race doesn't end when you get out of the single track. Instead, we continue to climb for another 6 miles on gravel. The gravel is smooth and the gradient is pretty mild to begin with, but towards the top it gets extremely chunky and steep. And both Finn Gullickson and Alan Schroeder were really pushing the pace to try to create separations in an already reduced front group of about 15 riders. This meant another 336 watts for 23 minutes, and the entire first climb took 38 minutes at 330 NP. Let me stress this again. We were only 15 miles into a 130 mile race. After this climb, we had a pretty significant 9 mile gravel descent with numerous rough sections and blind turns. And like I said at the top of the video, this is where I wanted to make moves happen. Nathan Haas and I traded turns on the front here. Small gaps opened up in the front group behind and whenever I looked back, I could tell that riders were having to do a lot of work to close down these gaps, which was perfect. This is one of the rare times where I think that being on the front and driving the pace actually saved energy because knowledge of the course and technical handling skills is what allowed an advantage. After the descent, we got about five minutes of respite before we tackled the first of the three most brutal climbs on the course. A 7 mile rough double track straight up the mountain with some pitches that had us barely staying on our bikes. Up this climb, it was Finn and Griffin who decided to light it up. They were obviously very confident in their climbing ability because they seemed to just keep turning the screws harder and harder, the steeper it got. The first pitch, which is the steepest, took 20 minutes at 347 NP. And the entire 37 minute climb required an NP of 323 watts. And this meant that for the first hour and 53 minutes of this race, we had a normalized power of 312 watts. In case you were wondering how brutal the terrain was, all that effort only produced an average speed of 16.5 miles per hour or 26.5 kilometers per hour. That being said, the next 45 miles of the race is a lot mellower, both in terms of the steepness of the gradients and the ruggedness of the terrain. And since the first two hours was so hard, we already had a greatly reduced lead group of just 10 or so riders, which meant that the pace over the next 45 miles eased up a lot, doing just 244 watts for the next two and a half hours. There were a few times where a rider would set a hard pace up a climb, but for the most part, we found ourselves riding pretty comfortably. After all, the last 50 miles of the race goes over some of the same brutal terrain that was used in the first 30 miles, just in the opposite direction. Meaning that some of the toughest sections of the course were yet to come, and the race was really going to be decided there. The fight for the podium spots really started at mile 78, with the steepest climb on course. A 1.6 mile double track that hits a max gradient of 29%. The climb kicks up immediately on chunky gravel, but the steepest pitch is about halfway up, and I was nearly cross-eyed just trying to keep the crank spinning in the bike upright. It took 402 watts for two and a half minutes, just to ride five miles per hour up this steep section, and honestly, if the power had been any lower than that, you'd probably be walking at that point. The entire climb took nearly 10 minutes with an NP of 364 watts. Right after this climb is a cyclocross-style switchback descent on a narrow grassy trail. By the time we got to the bottom, our group of 10 or so riders had shattered, and now there were just five riders making up the front group, which included Nathan Haas, Griffin Easter, Finn Gullickson, Adam Roberge, and me. We worked together on the road section for the next 10 minutes to cement our gap, but not long after that we would hit gravel again, and our focus would turn to dropping each other. The next gravel climb was nine miles long, but the organizers threw us a curveball and had us turn into singletrack about halfway up it. Nathan took the lead going into the singletrack, but not long after that I got by him, and I decided that this would be a good time to try to fracture this front group. This section of trail took about eight minutes, and in that time I did an NP of 323 watts. When I exited the singletrack I looked back and I saw that I had about a 30-second gap over the other four riders. For the next 11 minutes I attempted to grow this gap, doing 314 watts in the process, but Adam and Finn reeled me back in, and now we had a front group of three. Over the next hour and a half or so I tried multiple times to drop these two riders, attacking on rough gravel descents, singletrack sections, and I even made a move on a paved climb, doing 416 watts for three and a half minutes, but these two riders were still glued to my wheel. At mile 115 we came up on the last major climb of the day, and I knew that this was likely where the race was going to be decided. It was a one and a half mile steep paved climb before a gravel descent with chunky and loose corners. On this final climb, Adam attacked close to the bottom, and Finn and I simply had no response. Over the next 10 minutes I would see Adam slowly fade away into the distance, while I kept Finn within 10 seconds of me. At this point in the race with just 15 miles left to go, there was no holding back, that was everything I had. This effort took about 9 minutes at 352 watts. At the top I asked the spectator what the gap to Adam was, and he said that it was about a minute, so I figured that getting the win was no longer an option, but I still had Finn to contend with for second place. He crested the climb about 10 seconds ahead of me, and I quickly closed that back down on the gravel descent that followed. When we got to the bottom of the descent, the lead moto told us that Adam was only 20 seconds ahead of us, and I thought surely he can't be that close, but then I looked in the distance and sure enough there he was, and within 30 seconds we had caught him. This should have set off alarm bells in my head that Adam was hurting at this point, but I'm going to be honest, I was hurting pretty bad at this point too. Sure enough, Adam would tell me after the race that he was experiencing really bad cramping when we caught him. Had we just attacked him as soon as we made the catch, we probably would have dropped him instantly, but of course, I didn't know that at the time. Over the next six miles leading into the finish, we just soft pedaled and looked at each other, doing an NP of just 210 watts. I was waiting for some sort of attack, but it never came. I think all three of us were on our limit at this point in the race. Going into the sprint, Finn was leading, Adam was second wheel, and I was third wheel. Adam started his sprint extremely early, and I thought this is perfect, he's essentially just going to lead me out, but the finish is quite technical with a lot of grass corners and roots to maneuver around, and I wasn't able to come around Adam by the finish, and he took the win, and I was a bike length or two back in second place. In hindsight, I think Adam going early into the technical sprint was actually a very smart move on his part, and he's just a better sprinter than I am. In this final sprint, I hit a max power of 1,022 watts and 850 for 10 seconds. Looking back over the entire race, it took 7 hours and 24 minutes. I had a normalized power of 280, an average power of 224, average heart rate of 145, max heart rate 178, which is very low for me in a race, perhaps a sign of lingering fatigue from unbound, average speed of 17.6 miles per hour or 28 kilometers per hour, just over 6000 kilojoules and 462 TSS. This is my highest placing ever at a BWR race, so obviously I'm extremely happy about it, but the fact that Adam, who's a fellow jukebox factor rider, won the race made it that much better. Yeah, but did Adam do any polling during the race though? I need to decide whether or not to get mad about this on social media on behalf of the spirit of gravel. And this race wrapped up one of my most successful blocks of racing so far, with a top 10 at gravel locos, a top 20 at unbound and a podium here at BWR. I think I'm in the best shape that I've ever been in, and it really does seem like the extra volume that I did this spring has paid off. Maybe I'll do a video in the near future about exactly what that training looked like. If you want to follow my racing closer, be sure to check me out on Instagram. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like, subscribe, and share it with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.