 As it turns out, this was the winning move of the race, as Ted King and Joshua Wabari would go on to finish first and second. But for me, this was actually my biggest mistake of the race. The pace that they were holding was completely unsustainable for me, and even in their draft I was on my limit. Mind you that this is 6 hours into the race, and we were racing like we were in a 1 hour crit. Welcome back to another video, my name's Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at CTS as well as an ultra endurance mountain bike and gravel racer. This video is going to be a little bit different than my usual videos, you aren't going to get any science or training tips, but you may get a better idea of what it's like to do the DK 200 if you've never done it. I alluded to my DK performance in an earlier video, and many of you wanted to hear more, so here we go. In 2018 I competed in my first dirty Kanza, wait, sorry, I mean Kanza, I know the way you pronounce it is very important. Anyway, to say the least, the race was an eye-opener. My main focus for the past couple years has been 100 mile mountain bike races, and I've even managed to rack up three national ultra endurance series titles, which is a national series for 100 mile mountain bike racing here in the US. 100 mile mountain bike races usually last in the 6 to 7 hour range for me, so I thought my DK time would be in the 10 to 11 hour range. And my thought going in was, eh, how hard could an extra 3 or 4 hours be? I couldn't have been more wrong. Just simply finishing DK was one of the hardest things on a bike that I've ever done, let alone trying to get a good placing. With that, let's get right into how the race unfolded. The pace at the start was actually somewhat chill. I'm used to endurance mountain bike races where people go way too hard at the start and then blow up, and believe me, there was plenty of that going on. But at least for me, the pace seemed manageable. There was some rain at the start, which made for some sticky mud at the beginning of the race, which wreaked havoc on my shifting. I couldn't shift down into my three hardest gears on my cassette. It wasn't too big of a deal, though, because I had a large 52 tooth chainring, and it turns out this would become very important later on in the race. The rain didn't last long, though, and most of the day was dry and fast. I saw a lot of riders in the front group getting flats. This isn't a course where you can get away with weight we need tires. Luckily, I was able to keep air in my tires all day, though. Going through the feed zone in the lead group was super hectic. There was probably 50 of us all scrambling to get a feed, and those that made it through quick were not letting up, so it took some effort to catch back on. Thankfully, by the second feed zone, the group had withered down to about 10 riders, and it wasn't nearly as stressful. That feed zone was at mile 100, and shortly after this was when things would start to go south for me. There had been some attacks in the lead group, but nothing that had stuck. At about mile 110, Joshua Barry makes a move, and I decide to go with him. After a minute or two, I look back to see Ted King on my wheel, and now we've formed a group of three. As it turns out, this was the winning move of the race, as Ted King and Joshua Barry would go on to finish first and second. But for me, this was actually my biggest mistake of the race. The pace that they were holding was completely unsustainable for me, and even in their draft, I was on my limit. Mind you that this is six hours into the race, and we were racing like we were in a one-hour crit. At least that's how I felt. I'm sure for them it was just hard tempo. Needless to say, I wasn't going to last long in that group, but I tried to stay with them for way too long, and in the process, blew myself up. After about 20 minutes, I realized I couldn't hold that pace, and I dropped back to the next group on the road, which contained Jeff Khabush, Matt Stevens, the previous year's winner, Ian Tubbs, and Taylor Ladine. This was pretty funny, and in an interview with Bellow News, Khabush said he would refuse to work with anyone using aero bars, but boy was he working with us now that he was 115 miles in. He and Matt Stevens would go on to ride most of the day together, and Matt Stevens is about as pro aero bar as it gets and won the previous year using them. Sorry, I just had to go on a quick tangent slash rant there. Anyway, when I got caught by this group, I distinctly remember turning to Khabush and saying, man, it's up what those guys are doing up there. He then muddled under his breath to me. Yeah, those boys are fast, huh? Those would be the last words that I'd ever speak to that group as that massive effort that I made with Ted King and Joshua Waberi came back to bite me, and I found myself dropped again. Pretty soon, another rider, Jordan Rapp, came by me, and I failed to hold his wheel. At this point, I'm thinking, man, I'm done here. I'm about to get swamped by this mob of riders coming. I decided to stop and let my heart rate come down, and I was also starting to develop gut issues. After a couple of minutes, I got back to pedaling, and to my surprise, no one had passed me during this break, but I was soon joined by Tim Rugg and Craig Richie. Tim wouldn't last very long as he was dealing with cramps, but me and Craig would go on to ride most of the day together. He was even the one that I stopped at the chase with to get our photo. For those of you not hip to gravel culture, not stopping at the chase for a photo is a sin right up there with saying Kanza. From about mile 120 to 170, how I felt was very inconsistent. I would go from feeling great and pulling at 300 watts to struggling to maintain 150, and this probably happened five or six times. The reason for this is because I was teetering on the edge of bonking. I had full on race gut at this point, and eating was the last thing that I wanted to do. I would force feed myself bits of food here and there, at the final aid station at mile 150, I probably stopped for five minutes and forced down a PB&J and a Coke while I cooled down with some water as well. Thankfully, Craig waited for me, but if he had known how useless I would be to him, he probably wouldn't have because I was about to experience a full on bonk. After about another 15 miles, the bonk set in and I lost contact with Craig. At this point, 120 watts felt like a max effort. I felt nauseous and light headed and just really wanted the race to be over. I was barely covering any ground and I still had 30 miles to go. I'm not gonna lie, at this point in the race, I really wanted to quit. And this is where mental toughness becomes so important for races like this. Hitting the wall is part of it and everyone experiences low points in a race of this length. What I usually tell people is that no matter how bad you feel in a certain moment, nothing will feel worse than taking a DNF and having to dwell on that for the next couple of weeks. If you can just make it to the finish line, that'll erase any pain you may have felt that day. The crazy thing was, I was still in ninth place and no one had passed me. This blew my mind because I felt like I was going backwards. This became my motivation to keep going. And if I'm honest with myself, if I had been further back, I probably would have taken the DNF and I haven't DNF'd a race in four years. At mile 175, something miraculous happened. I looked out in the distance and saw a farmhouse. There was literally nothing but field, the gravel road I was on and this farmhouse. As I approached the house, there was a farmer out front and he said, hey, you need anything? I have no idea what I said back. For all I know, I was probably unresponsive at that point. I sat down on his front lawn and took any food or drink he gave me, which I believe was soda and granola bars. And I was extremely thankful for it. Somehow still no one had caught me at this point and I was barely able to pedal for probably 30 minutes. And then I just sat at this guy's house for another 10 minutes. That made me think that everyone else in the race must be suffering just as much as me. And in a sadistic way, that was somewhat comforting at the time. I got back on my bike, thanked the farmer for the food and got on my way. In about 20 minutes, the food started to work its magic and I started to feel better again. It was at this point that I finally got caught. The group that caught me had four riders and I made it five. If they had caught me 10 minutes earlier, I would have happily let them go and accepted any place I got when I crossed the finish line. But now with carbs in my system, I was thinking clearly again and I realized that just letting two of these riders beat me would push me out of the top 10. And I was determined to not let that happen. By the last five miles, I was confident that I had enough fuel in the tank to make a move. Although by this point, we were out of the rolling hills and into the flats right before we get to the finish in Emporia. So it wasn't a great place to make an attack but I still went for it. It was clear when I went that these riders were trashed because the only one to even put up a fight was Jamie Driscoll. I made a hard surge and then immediately got into the aero bars to try to minimize the draft, but he was right on my wheel. We traded a couple of poles and I realized that in this late stage of the race, we weren't gonna drop each other and it was gonna come down to a sprint finish. I let Jamie lead into the finish knowing that the chances of beating a rider like him in a sprint were low. But somehow miraculously, I was able to come around him to secure a ninth place finish in 11 hours, 39 minutes and 18 seconds. I've never considered myself a sprinter and I have no business winning a sprint against someone like Jamie, but I think there were two things that were working for me. One, it was at the end of an 11 hour day so anyone's sprint is probably pretty pathetic at that point and I had a massive, at least by gravel standards, 52 tooth chain ring, which allowed me to not get spun out on the flat road leading to the finish. My numbers for the sprint were pretty pathetic with a max power of 866 watts and a 10 second average of 726 watts. But I guess that after 200 miles that was good enough. In fact, my numbers in general were lower than I'm used to seeing for a race, but I usually don't do races quite this long or bonk quite that hard. My normalized power was 233 and my average power was 197 and it was probably about 68 kilos or 150 pounds for this race. The takeaway here is that Kanza is freaking hard. I was completely humbled by my first go at it and I have respect for anyone who makes it to the finish line in Emporia. Every race is a learning experience but this is especially true for Kanza. Whether the race goes good or bad, actually, especially if it goes bad, you end up learning more about tactics, nutrition, pacing. In the case of Kanza, I learned what I was willing to put myself through to reach a finish line. With the Kanza lottery going on right now, I thought it'd be a good time for this video. And this year I'll be attempting my second dirty Kanza and hopefully I'll be able to improve on my first attempt. Also this weekend, I have my first race of the season, a sugar cane 200 in Florida, which you guessed it is also a 200 mile gravel race. This will be my first time doing a race of this distance since Kanza. Let me know down in the comments if you like this kind of video and I can make more of them. And if you wanna stay up to date on my racing, head over to Instagram and follow me at Dylan Johnson. Thanks for watching and if you enjoyed this video, be sure to subscribe, give it a like and share it with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.