Slobberknocker Race Report

The Slobberknocker is a 75 mile gravel grinder in Perryville, Arkansas. With my past gravel road racing experience at Southern Cross, I opted to ride my cyclocross bike. Most people were riding mountain bikes and told me I was brave for bringing the CX rig. I knew that there were a couple of gnarly spots on the course, but that the skinny tires would be faster on ~90% of the route. In light of my ongoing minor awe at the volume/intensity of training I’ve been absorbing lately, I added a motivational sticker:

The course started out on 6 miles of pavement before turning into the gravel roads of the Ouachita National Forest. The rollout from Perryville went smoothly. My plan was to get ahead of the other women from the start so that I wouldn’t have to wonder what my placing was on course. I ended up on the front, shoulder to shoulder with Frank Webber (on his CX bike) for the neutral motorpace out of town.

At the first climb (still on the pavement), I sat back and watched as a bunch of riders hammered up while I rode a hard, but non-strenuous tempo up the hill. I figured as long as no women were challenging me, I’d keep the pace at about 90-95% of “beast mode” in order to not destroy myself before next weekend’s Cohutta 100.  Like Southern Cross, my climbing strategy was to stand and pedal singlespeed style rather than gear down and spin.

The course was rolling big ring stuff for a while, but once I was on the bigger climbs in the Forest, my strategy was also to cruise the descents easy to avoid flat tires or wrecks. This meant that I was back & forth with a lot of guys on mountain bikes who would granny gear uphill then let loose downhill. There were only a few spots were I really had to ride the brakes and creep. I only heard the rim hit a rock once or twice. (Tubeless FTW!)

One part of the course (the descent to/climb out of Lake Sylvia) was two-way traffic to an aid station/turnaround where you could see the people ahead of (or behind) you. After a quick pit stop at the Aid Station, I was making my way up the climb when Laureen Coffelt zoomed past on her way down. Even though I knew that meant she was a solid 5-10 minutes behind me, it motivated me go one gear harder.

Speaking of motivation, I almost forgot to add a song to this post (weird video… you’ll notice something new each time you watch it)

The course after the turnaround was a couple more climbs and a bunch of flat/rollers. After the initial sketch of the last big descent, I hit the big ring and hauled all sorts of ass, absorbing a large quantity of guys who had been just ahead of me all day. Rolling back into town, I realized that I was going to come in under 5 hours (not that it was a goal or anything, since I really had no idea how long the course would take, but it’s a good benchmark).

Official finish time, 4:54- landing me in 1st place with $200, a belt buckle, and a sweet trophy woodsplitter maul. Bam!

Results aren’t online yet, but I’ll post a link & maybe some more photos as they turn up.

 

3 thoughts on “Slobberknocker Race Report

  1. Nice ride. Ya see, you broke the 2nd place curse you were worried about! It was just a matter of patience.

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