I would have never thought my favorite road race is on gravel, but the dynamics of Huffmaster is playful enough to serve as such.
Last year was my first stab at this event going really well until it didn’t when inattentiveness caused me to get dropped twenty five miles in followed by a shifter battery doing dead made me feel like I had unfinished business.
Huffmaster is such a fast course, I was enamored with the speed never averaging anything this high in other gravel go-arounds making me focus more on time than positioning.
My goal was to cut fifteen minutes off of last year’s time that sounds inconceivable though attainable if I could avoid last year’s maladies.
To make this possible, I needed to take advantage of as much drafting possible something that was more akin to racing on pavement than gravel.
One of my biggest keys was staying in the front pack the first forty miles that had one major shakeup around mile eight with a few patches of mud shredding the peloton down to over half its size.
I knew everyone would scatter on two and a third mile Road 303 climb, but the key was to not fall off the back to pick up riders after the descent.
Taking three water bottles allowed me to skip the first aid station and increased my odds of finding others to join which rang true finding a handful to help keep pace.
My gamble paid off joining a handful for the next seven miles of dirt that with its rolling nature saw long turns on the front, but the key was staying with this pack for the following descent where then we could use paceline tactics to pick up time.
This strategy worked really well getting fractured picking up other riders hurting our consistency though still keeping me ahead of pace.
Reaching Leesville saw our last ascent where I had time to take advantage of the second aid station needing the fluids losing a water bottle twenty miles back.
The pitch increases turning onto Huffmaster, but this two-thirds of a mile climb is brief and knowing losing a net 1,600′ the last 21 miles that I was going to break my five hour goal if I didn’t cramp up.
Despite being a little parched, I surprised myself coming in nine minutes ahead of pace even dialing it back a bit.
Sometimes a second chance gets too far into your head, but proper planning for Huffmaster was the key and now do I try to do faster?