The Sub-9 Death March is in it's 4th year as a slightly off beat cycling event / race. The event is based at the Mid West Trailrider Center, just like the Sub-9 Gravel Grovel. Unlike the Gravel Grovel, there is no route only a collection of pioneer era cemeteries spread throughout the Hoosier National forest which are used as checkpoints. Teams of two have to plan their own route visiting cemeteries to collect time bonuses whilst including the 5 mandatory checkpoints declared by the event organizers, the lowest net time (ride time with time bonuses subtracted) wins. This years event took place on Saturday March 8th.
My Death March was a very different experience than originally planned. After much discussion, Angus, my 8 year old son and I had planned to ride in the Parent & Child category on our tandem:
However, the snow & ice prevented us getting in any training rides and the weather in the week ahead of the event still looked grim. We made a last minute decision for Angus to stay at home and I was honored to take up Matt Battin's offer to ride with him as a last minute stand-in. In one stroke this event went from a bit of fun to having the credentials of a serious contender.
The "serious contender" factor was diluted by the fact that neither Matt or I had trained for the ride, nor had we done any reconnaissance of potential routes. Fortunately for us, the list of cemeteries hadn't changed since last year, so at least we knew where they all were. Also, Matt had recently returned from a MTB trip to Sedona where he'd ridden every day for a week with many rides over 2 hours and I was (hopefully) carrying some form from Southern Cross, although since Feb 22nd, I had been running pretty much exclusively.
On race day, there was a great turn out and the weather was actually quite nice (only 6 days earlier we'd had freezing rain topped with a couple of inches of snow!). The Bicycle Station was well represented with at least 4 teams representing and there were many other friends & acquaintances not seen since the Cyclocross season at the end of last year. Our aspirations of a good performance were further buoyed by the absence of multiple winners, Don Galligher & Pawel Rutkowski from the entry list - scratch one team who might beat us off the list!
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| Bicycle Station Teams before the start |
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| Waiting for the start |
From the go, 3 of the 4 Bicycle Station teams headed away from the crowds, electing to ride the horse trail 90 from the start up to the Hickory Ridge fire road. There's been much debate about this vs the road route - it's definitely shorter but the trail conditions can be variable although with still frozen ground conditions it seemed like a pretty fast ascent. We were surprised (and a bit frustrated) to find two riders ahead of us as we emerged from the train onto the gravel road. We caught up with Jeremiah Johnson and Craig Baker (Speedway Wheelmen) and they rode with us to the first cemetery at Hickory Grove. It was clear that the road had been a couple of minutes quicker than our trail choice, a fact that gnawed at me for the rest of the ride and proved to be significant in the final results.
Compared to the Gravel Grovel, our Death March route took in significantly more trail - despite this, Matt and I both elected to ride Cyclocross bikes with a view to the long gravel road sections. Matt was riding his new Trek Boone and I was using my Trek Cronus - we were both amazed by how comfortable and confident we found these bikes on technical trails both descending & climbing, hopping logs and riding ruts. It really didn't feel like we were giving up much compared to a mountain bike.
We made our way to Callahan, Cornett, Hanner, Thompson, Houston cemeteries. 90 mins into the ride, we arrived a Lutes, where Matt and I had dropped water bottles and some food - we also shed heavier gloves and jackets to be picked up on the way home later in the day. Doubling back on ourselves, we saw Andy Messer and Jeff Fetterer, our Bicycle Station team mates heading towards Lutes for their water stop, only a few minutes behind us on the road.
The next section of the ride was quite a long drag to the mandatory checkpoint at Elkinsville - the choice being either a long pavement ride past Story or an extended trail ride on Nebo Ridge to connect with the singletrack section of Combs Road. We chose the trail route, but rising temperatures meant the ground was no longer frozen and Combs Road was a muddy slop-fest. There were a lot of teams heading in both directions on Combs Road and the gravel road out to Elkinsville, after our descent I was dreading the return leg on Combs however I found both strength and enough traction to ride the climb.
Once back on the gravel heading to Maumee bridge it was clear that Matt was going through his dark patch. We were close to 3 hours into the ride and everyone goes through dips on long rides, this was Matt's. We maintained a steady pace, but with tired legs at the Maumee bridge we made what turned out to be a critically flawed tactical decision to miss the short out & back to Fleetwood Cemetery. Instead we pushed on to the mandatory Robertson cemetery and then climbed Fire Tower road with Matt suffering all the way. We had to get off our bikes & walk the stairs to the top of the fire tower - this was a good time to fill up water bottles and eat some of the food we were carrying without being bounced around by the gravel, I had some caffeinated Shot Bloks which I gave to Matt. With food, water and some caffeine on board his dark patch came to an end, we picked up pace and started to relish the thought of closing in on the finish with our final three cemeteries the sun even came out to warm our backs as we rode West towards 446 - that felt really good!
We hit Todd cemetery and the final two mandatory checkpoints, Hillenburg and Mitchell with Matt really hammering the final few miles - we arrived back at the finish as the first team back. This was a good sign but we hadn't visited all the cemeteries, there were additional time bonuses available and it was possible that teams finishing after us with more time bonuses could beat us - so the waiting started. Jeff and Andy rolled in about 15 minutes after us - they'd made some different choices on route and had also had to ride out their "dark patch".
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| Relieved that it's over - at the finish |
Pretty soon there were multiple teams sitting out the wait for final results - we washed our very muddy bikes off and talked about all the things we'd do differently next time (like ride the road to Hickory Ridge instead of taking the trail....). Fortunately Yats turned up to serve food for all the finishers and Upland Brewery turned up with beer for all the finishers - all of a sudden, the results seemed less important!
The results took some time - Tania from Sub-9 had to collate all the teams finish times and the cemeteries they'd visited to determine the net times which set the final positions. Matt and I had to get back to Columbus for family commitments before the final announcements so it was disappointing when Jeff Fetterer called to tell us we'd ended up 2nd place, by only 3 minutes, from Tim Brown and Kirk Grynwald who had finished 52 mins after us but had three more cemeteries worth of time bonuses adding up to 55 mins. Our trail vs road decision right at the start of the race probably impacted our time by about 3 mins, and in hindsight, even a slow ride out & back to Fleetwood would have improved our net time by 3-4 mins - two factors in our 4 hour ride which might have changed the outcome & got us the win...
It was a great event, a wonderful day to be out in the Hoosier National Forest and inspiring to see so many people out enjoying riding their bikes, especially the number of Parent / Child teams, a separate category for the first time this year. For Matt and I, there is always next year - we'll be wiser and potentially better prepared!
Bicycle Station Teams
Matt Battin & Tim Proctor - 2nd Male
Jeff Fetterer & Andy Messer - 4th Male
Blake Nolan & Randy Witte - 11th Male
Rob Serbent (Gnawbone Lefty) & Colorado Weliever - 12th Co-Ed
My bike set-up for this event (and the Gravel Grovel)
My bike set-up for this event (and the Gravel Grovel)
- Trek Cronus CX Ultimate
- Selle Italia SLR XC Saddle
- Shimano Ultegra Tubeless Wheels
- Bontrager CX3 tires @ 40 psi
- 11-32 Rear Cassette
- SRAM Force WiFli rear deraileur (32T compatible)
- 38/46 Chainrings on SRAM Force Cranks
- Avid Shorty Ultimate canti brakes
