I did my first Dirt Diggler event in 2016. To be honest, I mostly signed up for the name. I mean, how cool is that? It was my first gravel event (hindsight says that's not a great first event) and I ended up having all manner of problems before and during that race. For starters, I didn't have a Garmin, so I was going to use my phone as my Strava recorder. There's VERY limited cell service at REEB Ranch (and the surrounding areas, for that matter) so I wasn't able to record anything. And it didn't matter anyway, because right at the start of the race, the phone just shut down. Couldn't turn it back on until I got back and then it acted as if nothing happened. Weird. Not that it would have mattered all that much, I suppose, other than I have no record of doing the event other than my resulting time. About 5 miles in on Pinnacle Mountain Road, I got a flat tire, so I pulled off to the side and replaced the tube with the only spare I brought. How often are we gonna
dumb \ ˈdəm 1 a : lacking intelligence : stupid This past weekend my buddy somehow talked me into riding a gravel race of 71 miles with 7,000 feet of climbing on single speeds. Um, but the event did not have a single speed division. So we signed up for our age group. We normally ride a gear ratio of around 42x16 around Raleigh, so with that much climbing, we decided we would run a ratio of 42x19. Now there's nothing smart about running single speeds. Regardless of how much time and energy and thinking you do with choosing a gear ratio for a ride, it's inevitable that the gear you pick is going to suck at some point along the ride. This ride was no different. At times, I wished I had a 42x15 and other times I wished I had a 42x42, especially on the Whetstone Mountain climb: a 1 mile ascent at an average gradie