So, if you have been following me at all on social media for the past week, you would have known that I was attempting to do the Grumpy Grind this weekend. This was an 82 mile gravel grinder. A gravel grinder is a very Midwest sort of bike ride that is focused on riding on gravel roads. 

So for the past month or so leading up to this ride I was preparing myself for some pretty terrible weather. Cold, perhaps raining conditions. What we got instead was a beautiful day. Perhaps a too beautiful one. People were initially joking about how this was the least grumpy of the Grumpy Grinds, but after about 20 miles in I think every found out that the sun and the heat combined with the nearly sand like road conditions made this a very grumpy grind. 

Road conditions, as I mentioned were brutal. The gravel roads were so dry that they were basically powdered sand with rocks in them. It was extremely difficult to find a path on some of the roads. The most brutal section of the route was on Hershey Road, around the 25 mile mark. This area, as I found out, was a killer for many people on the ride. Both my dad and I decided that we weren't going to be able to finish by here and instead we were going to bail out at the midway point. I wanted to make an effort to try and finish the full first half of the ride and tried to get the last ten miles or so. That ended up being a mistake that was more than I could handle. As soon as I started around that 35th mile I was already beginning to cramp up in my legs. What I didn't know is that what lay in front of me were some of the hardest vertical changes that were to be shown on the ride thus far. As you look at the back half of my graph above, you can see that I hit several elevation changes of over two hundred feet. Well that finally killed me. After stalling out on several hills my legs decided to call it quits. I seized up and literally couldn't walk. I had to then call in Megan to act as my SAG to bail me out. 

#grumpygrind

A video posted by Matthew Supert (@sup909) on Apr 17, 2016 at 12:31pm PDT

Overall though, this was a great ride. It was brutal, but you don't know if you can't do it until you try. Great people and a great setup overall though. 

http://blog.matthewsupert.me/grumpy-grind-number-4-or-the-story-of-...