2023 Crooked Gravel Race

Crooked Gravel course

Tired of swapping out the tires on my Trek Domane, I decided to buy a dedicated gravel bike with the widest tires I could find on the market. Canyon’s supply chain has finally improved and I was able to nab a Canyon CF SL7 Grizl. What I liked most about the Grizl was it was $1,000 cheaper than the Trek Checkpoint I had been eyeing, with almost the exact same components, weight and tire clearance. Anyways, now that I finally had a decent gravel bike, I wanted to do a gravel race and see where I stand.

Crooked Gravel is part of the Ride Collective, which includes the classic Copper Triangle, a few races out in Grand Junction and then a tour in New Mexico called Enchanted Circle (which got cancelled this year due to construction projects). It was close to Denver and looked intriguing so I signed up. The race was a hard start at 8am and roughly 350 riders were participating in the 67-mile course. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated at the start with a bunch of people elbow to elbow, a good portion of whom looked like they were “in it to win it”. My unofficial goal was to finish in under 5 hours.

8am start

We got a police escort down CO-40 through Winter Park and Frisco, took a left at the light where the Safeway is and hit dirt soon after on County Rd 73. Not too long after hitting 73, the peloton (which was breaking up rapidly between the elites and the weekend warriors) took a hard right on to Cty Rd 50S, otherwise known as “Crooked Creek Rd”. The course weaved its way through the Arapaho NF due north of Byers Peak Wilderness reaching the first aid at roughly 13 miles.

the “peloton” still relatively in tact. Dude in front of #171 would finish the day 15 seconds ahead of me

Winding our way up with Byers Peak in background

Final hill before Aid #1

Aid #1 with the course that lay ahead. This is when the downhill “fun” started

I wolfed down a couple bananas, refilled my bottles with some Tailwind, stretched my back and was off. The next aid wouldn’t be for another 28 miles. The road beyond Aid 1 started off fine. I tailed a couple guys through some smooth’ish flowy gravel. It quickly turned to washboard and even got a tad technical at times. This is where I was officially introduced to what a gravel race is all about – those who can handle the downhills and those who can’t. I fell somewhere in between. Many might kind of wonder what the point of gravel is and at times, I do too. Flying 25-30mph down a rough dirt road with no suspension is a tad confusing. Being this was my first gravel “race”, I didn’t know what to expect. I had trained on courses such as Dirty Bizmark around Marshall Mesa, and while “rough”, the route is relatively smooth – you just need to dodge the knobby rocks. Crooked course was different. It was teeth chattering rough. I felt I had to pump my brakes for fear of losing control. After speaking with a few post-race and reading some Strava posts, most of the riders in the front or sub-4 hour range just went “full send”. Maybe one day I’ll get there, it just seemed a little insane to me.

Anyways – the course started to noticeably get smoother once we hit the Keyser Creek section. All I was concerned with around this part was potholes hidden in the shade. But this section definitely allowed you to open it up a bit more. I still was getting aggressively passed though, but I learned to be ok with it. Once the course reached the Horseshoe Campground, it was paved dirt along the southern boundary of the North Park Valley. Views here were nice and riding was more casual through a section of rolling hills all the way to US-40.

North Park Valley

Just East of Williams Fork Reservoir, approaching US-40 and back on tarmac.

One thing of note. I found riding on flattish gravel/dirt was more difficult than riding on a slight uphill (5-6% grade) on paved asphalt.

The course crossed the Colorado River and paralleled it along US-40 for roughly 5-6 miles until Aid #2, which was directly at the intersection of US-40 and CR-50 along the Colorado. This was roughly mile 40. I was still in very good spirits at this point. Other than some bone jarring descents, I was physically fresh. Nothing up until this point was all that physically exhausting. That would change quickly.

The grunt up CR-50 started off casually through a lush valley along “Beaver Creek” (no relation to the ski resort). I was able to actually start passing quite a few people as I had lots of fuel from Aid #2 propelling me forward. This wouldn’t last. At some point CR-50 parallels “The Blue Ridge” which is this massive, never ending ridge (that eventually terminates in I believe a ranked 11er). It never really got all that steep, it just went on forever. It was basically 11 miles of a 5-10% grade…..for eternity. It was around this time of the race when the temps started to get pretty hot (70-75) and then the nail in the coffin were the biting flies. They almost broke me. It was somewhere along this section where I switched my race goal from sub-5 hours to just staying on the bike the whole time. This proved to be kind of a dumb new goal cause remaining on the bike I think ultimately hurt me as my back, arms and ass really suffered. But my main logic was staying on and keeping a pace quick enough to keep the flies from overwhelming me. I also started to accrue sore feet soles cause the cleats on my shoes were too far forward, which was resulting in some nagging stress pain. All in all, I was in the “pain cave” and just had to get through it.

Despite the misery, it was a beautiful valley that I had never been to before.

I finally reached the “top” and had a short 1-2 mile descent straight back to Aid #1/3 from earlier in the day. Of course I started getting hammered with washboards again but was too tired to care. Most skipped this aid, but I needed some sustenance to make for a semi-enjoyable finish to the day.

I mentioned before I had given up on a sub-5 hour time, but in my exhaustion, was completely unaware I was right on the mark. I ended up finishing at 5:03 so have something to work towards next year. Some shots of the finale….

Fraser Valley in sights. I kept telling anyone who I passed/passed me “Beer and Tacos are down there”

That’s #171 15 seconds ahead of me…..

Byers Peak and its namesake Wilderness

The end of the race was somewhat anti-climatic. The timed section was back somewhere along the Crooked Creek dirt road, so the remaining couple miles were along a bike path back in to town of Winter Park with no official welcoming committee. The line for beer and food was long, so I rode a little ways down the road to “Big Trout Brewing” which was attached to the free parking garage I parked at where I met my brother who had been in the area hiking.

All in all a great and deceptively challenging race that I will 100% put in to the annual rotation.

Cheers!

Thanks for reading.