Southern Cross Gravel Bike Race
Back in the day, the Yankee Springs mountain bike race in April was the first test of how well one did at winter training. Later, the Barry Roubaix gravel race became the marker. For me, since 2017, it has been the Southern Cross gravel race in Dahlonega Georgia.
I competed in my first bike race of the season as I have for the last seven years, making the trek to Dahlonega Georgia for the Southern Cross 50-mile gravel road race. The event is held the first weekend in March annually.
One year, I forget which, was notable in that Lance Armstrong, Christian Vandevelde and George Hincapie showed up to race! Armstrong took 4th place and Vandevelde 6th, with Hincapie a DNF due to broken derailleur. The next year Vandevelde and Hincapie again participated taking 4th and 6th respectively.
The event is fifty miles of gravel (with a little pavement at the beginning and end) and 5742 feet of climbing over two big humps of the mountain! The climbs are grueling with some climbing hitting 16% grade at the 11.5 mile mark and downhills exceeding more than 10% with one segment at 20.6 miles hitting negative 28.6%!!
The descents are jarring due to the washboards in places and the rock embedded in the roadway.
I have finished the event every year since 2017 with the exception of 2022 during which I had serious mechanical issues with my new Cannondale Topstone gravel bike. The chain kept falling off the smallest cog on the cassette and I ended up dropping out having never made it past mile three!
My best finish time was 2018, followed by 2021 which I was on track to beat my 2018 time until another rider clipped my handlebars sending me onto the gravel at 20+ miles per hour shredding my left hip bloody. 2020 was about the only race I participated in that year as Covid shut everything down shortly after that.
2017: Finish time 5:02, 48th of 66 racers 50–59. 243rd of 321 racers that finished.
2018: Finish time 4:18, 45th of 62 in 50–59 age group
2019: Finish time 4:52, 12th of 14 in 60+ age group
2020: Finish time 4:56, 18th of 23 in 60+ age group
2021: Finish time 4:25, 16th of 26 in 60+ age group, 265 of 323 overall
2022: DNF
It should be noted that the race in 2017 included five miles of mountain bike single track in the middle of the event. This single track was removed in 2018 due to rainy weather to protect the trail and never added back to the race route.
I went into this year’s event with what I thought was pretty good training. Unfortunately, I became very ill a couple weeks before which pretty much stopped about a week’s worth of riding on my trainer.
As usual, Joni and I boarded Nakita for the weekend and drove 5–6 hours south, usually to southern Indiana, but this year to just north of Cincinnati and stayed at a hotel since the full drive is well over twelve hours and I don’t want to do that drive all in one day before the race. We finished the remaining seven plus hours on Friday.
The last three hours, especially, were grueling. Three hours of driving in car wash rain conditions on twisty mountain roads nearly white knuckle! UGH!
Finally got to the Airbnb we have been using for this weekend the last five years. We unpacked and got ready to head to the Montaluce Winery property where the race starts and ends. The winery had a fantastic restaurant where we have had our Friday night dinner the last five years. A couple years ago they also added a more casual trattoria and we have gone there last year and this year for our Saturday evening meal the evening after the race ends. Part of this decision is the food is so damn good and the staff so fantastic. But also, Dahlonega is home to Northern Georgia University and there seems to always be something going on in the town proper which fills up all the restaurants worth dining at there.
Race morning I got up and made my Gordan Ramsey scrambled egg on brioche with some orange juice and coffee. I usually have a fried egg on bagel, but changed it up a bit this year. The advantage of this Airbnb is being able to manage my race morning diet.
We drove out to the event and I pondered my clothing options. I had a base layer, arm and leg warmers and jersey. But once we got to the start location I questioned my choices and peeled off the base layer and arm warmers, opting for a light thermal jacket instead. (I kept the leg warmers on).
There was concern about the course conditions due to the rain the last couple days, but the gravel roads were hard packed and fast and only wet in a few spots.
The 400 racers or so took off on a neutral start out of the winery property and onto the paved road for 3.5 iles and then the race director pulls over as the race turns left off the pavement to the gravel.
Unfortunately, within the first six miles I had the same mechanical issue of the chain dropping off the smallest cassette ring as I did the previous year. But determined to NOT drop out again, I decided to just keep riding and simply not use the smallest cog on my cassette. I was able to ride successfully for the next 38 miles or so doing this.
The climbing was brutal with my speed barely hitting 3mph on some of the ascents. I was able to bomb the downhills though, which garnered a compliment from a rider on a mountain bike the last big downhills who, as he passed me, exclaimed I was doing impressive on my gravel bike. I pretty much kept up with him and then passed him on a flat section about six miles from the finish.
I passed a single speed rider in the first few miles who was walking the climb. This is one race where there is literally NO advantage to riding single speed. The climbs will all require walking at some point. The course is never muddy enough to forego gears due to conditions. The flats do not allow for really cranking one’s speed and the descents outpace even a geared bike’s best gear forcing most riders to coast the descents.
Anyway, I got back to the paved sections and motored toward the finish. The finish dives into the winery property on a small grassy trail with a creek crossing and a run up. There was one really muddy section of ten yards which I dismounted and then got back on the bike for the last three hundred yards, crossing the finish line with the worst finish time and pace I have had at this event in six finishes!
2023:Finish time 5:23, 36 of 38 in 60+ age group, 323 of 350 overall
But I did finish and now need to get back onto the trainer and some outdoor riding for the upcoming three events on my calendar: Dirty-30, Yankee Springs TT, and Barry Roubaix.
