I’ve spent most of my life trying to better myself. I’ve chased fitness, strived toward lofty career goals, surrounded myself with people who inspire me, and even tried to learn to love who I am. Sadly, it seems there’s one thing about me that I simply cannot change: When there’s an opportunity to inflict great suffering upon myself, I must take it. And thus, I found myself driving to Arkansas with two bicycles and a car full of gels, bars, hopes, and dreams.

The Big Sugar Classic is a pair of events in Bentonville, Arkansas: Little Sugar MTB and Big Sugar Gravel. They’re 100 kilometers and 100 miles, respectively, with 6 days of rest between them. Completing both isn’t a casual task, especially for a hack like myself.

But I’d done the gravel race twice before, and have since declared it a favorite of mine. The length and terrain seem to suit me, and I have close friends, Sean & Gabriela, to stay and race with. Last year the organizers introduced the mountain bike race. It received high praise and, for reasons I’ve yet to understand, I decided I had to do it. My eyes have always been bigger than my legs. At some point I should just learn to accept this.

Riding centuries in Prospect Park won’t fix a man

I’ve been a bit down on my luck this past year. Many of my troubles have been my own doing, but in some ways it feels like it hasn’t stopped raining since Unbound in 2023.

After that race I broke my wrist, got COVID more times than I could count, bruised the same femur twice, acquired an isolating and inconvenient autoimmune disease, and entered some sort of self-inflicted spiral while trying to figure out what it was that I cared about in this life. At one point the clouds overhead had cleared enough for me to start training again, and I soon found a disturbed joy in riding 100 miles in Prospect Park. I did so twice, but this mania was short-lived. Once again my body and mind decided they were no longer willing to cooperate. I stopped riding bicycles for the summer of 2024 to focus on other things.

These struggles and fits are a common experience in our sprawling and complicated world. Nonetheless, they did make me question my decision to tackle both races in the Big Sugar Classic. I simply didn’t have that dog in me. I was overwhelmed by the logistics and unprepared for the races themselves. In early summer I made the decision to defer my registration to 2025, and only needed the courage to break the news to Sean & Gabriela. I never actually found it.

Suddenly it was August and the Big Sugar group chat got busy. Every day I’d pick up my phone to photos of gas station delicacies from long training rides, course updates and race strategy from my favorite locals, and theories about which pig at Whistling Springs would bite my foot this year. At some point the conversation found its way to how much the sport had changed since we’d started doing these stupid races together. Sean told me that the Big Sugar Classic might be his last hurrah. I, being a man of more passion than reason, decided to ignore my lack of preparation and figure out how to make the drive to Arkansas. I decided I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t join Sean at the start.

I scrambled to get my car of questionable provenance ready for the task. I found 2 motel rooms along the way for $45 and $55 each. I’d sort my head out on the drive and find my legs once I got there. It’s amazing what naivete and 120g of carbs per hour can do.

A ship proves seaworthy

The car I’d chosen for the trip was an interesting choice: a 2009 Volvo C30 R-Design.

I’d found it on Facebook Marketplace in February and taken a bus to Manahawkin, New Jersey, to see it in person. After deciding the vehicle met my low standards, I purchased it with cash that I had stashed in my pockets and socks. I drove it home that day, and the clutch master cylinder leaked so much fluid that it soaked through my left shoe. I gotta stop buying shitty cars.

But this one had good bones, and by March it was up and running as my weekend mountain bike hauler. It had proven itself reliable and very fun to drive, and I’d stopped caring that a prior owner had painted the brake calipers yellow. In September I brought it to a trusted mechanic to splash some holy water on it before the trip. I wasn’t ready to race, but my high-mileage shitbox was ready for the drive.

I set out toward Bentonville on a Wednesday and told my hosts I’d see them on Friday morning. As I crossed the Verrazzano, it occurred to me that this entire trip consisted of long, dumb things: a 20-hour drive, a 100k mountain bike race, a 100-mile gravel race, and another 20-hour drive. I reminded myself that I like long dumb things and pointed the car west with conviction.

Like most Americans, my relationship with the United States is complicated. I’m proud to call New York City my home, but I relish the opportunity to leave. This country is on a beautiful plot of land, and I often find myself engrossed in the challenge of trying to understand what it means to the hundreds of millions of humans who inhabit it. I was looking forward to traversing half of it alone.

I stopped briefly in a Staten Island parking lot, where I commiserated about spinal injuries with a woman who once lived in the neighborhood my mother grew up in. In Pennsylvania, I weaved between semi trucks and water towers before watching the sun set ahead of me on I-70. Just before West Virginia, I stopped at my second truck stop of the day. The night sky felt so cold and empty that I struggled to answer a stranger who’d asked for a better look at my tattooed arms. I took a few bites of a sandwich I’d bought and decided I’d rather be hungry. The driver’s seat was still warm as I climbed back in and headed for the highway.

That night I saw Wheeling, West Virginia, for the first time. As I passed over the Ohio River, the glow of the city’s suspension bridge illuminated the car’s interior. The car was full of trash, but only one hour of driving remained until I could clean it out and sleep.

In Caldwell, Ohio, I got to see just how much hotel you can get for $45. It’s more than you’d expect, especially if you don’t mind explaining to the night staff why you’re traveling alone with two bicycles. I carefully tucked the Volvo between two contractors’ trucks and used the elevator to shuttle my stuff up to my room for the night. I tried not to worry whether a motor with 160,000 miles on it would come to life again in the morning. I slept. It was a good day.

Some records from along the way:

Magnolia Electric Co. - Songs: Ohia

Forth Wanderers - Forth Wanderers

Highway Rider - Brad Mehldau

Country - Medium Build

Lahai - Sampha

Saint Cloud - Waxahatchee

Tiger’s Blood - Waxahatchee

No Mountains in Manhattan - Wiki

On The Impossible Past - The Menzingers

Young Man In America - Anais Mitchell

Southwestern - Jason Isbell

Endless - Frank Ocean

Hygiene - Drug Church

A Thousand Surfaces - Hard Girls

Not Like This - Iron Chic

Teenage Dream - Katy Perry

Hard Groove - The RH Factor

The Incessant - Meat Wave

Once Was Lost Now Just Hanging Around - Sego

I woke early and made coffee in the hotel room before heading down to the car. A quick inspection revealed a vehicle in good health, so I let the car warm up and bought yet another tank of gas.

Much of the day was spent continuing west on I-70 with the windows down, barreling through fields of corn on both sides. My cell service faded in and out throughout the day, sometimes leaving me with nothing to listen to but the drone of an inline-five motor. Passenger cars became scarce, and the occasional downshift to pass a truck was the only reprieve from my otherwise-mundane charge toward Missouri. I read the hand-painted signs that interrupted the endless, golden seas around me. I fantasized about a simpler life. I drove by a hitch hiker and wondered how long a man can hold out his arm before he decides to walk.

I reached the Ozark Mountains as the sun was setting, and pulled into St. James, Missouri, after dark. I paid $55 cash for a room in a roadside motel that smelled like a cleaning product I’d never encountered. I loaded in for the night and did my best to sleep. Tomorrow would be a short drive followed by an afternoon mountain bike ride in Bentonville.

In the morning I woke to a puddle of oil underneath the car. My motel neighbors watched as I crawled underneath it and leaned over the engine bay searching for the leak. It was still morning and O’Reilly’s was a short walk down the road. I bought 2 quarts of oil and decided to press on.

The car was behaving, but I stopped in Sarcoxie, Missouri, to reassess. I sat on the curb at a gas station and drank an energy drink, giving the car some time to demonstrate a leak by marking its territory on the pavement. Nothing. I scratched my head, but I was free to go. Before I could climb back in, another driver approached me and handed me a folded napkin. I opened it and saw a phone number. I did my best to offer a sincere apology in advance for not calling it, and made my way back to the highway.

The oil situation had delayed my arrival to Bentonville by a few hours, but I arrived with just enough daylight to sneak in a ride.

There were only two nights before Little Sugar MTB, and I spent the first evening pre-riding a technical section of the course with Sean. The next day I bought groceries and worked my way through the bike setup and nutrition plan. I didn’t feel prepared for a 100k mountain bike race, and was experiencing the onset of a physical illness that I’d learn months later was Celiac Disease.

But it’d be silly to have made the drive for nothing, so I ignored my body’s cries for help. I laid out all my nutrition on a desk next to the bed, and tried to get some sleep before the first race day.

Race Day #1

I had three things absolutely dialed for Little Sugar MTB:

The bike
My nutrition plan
A litany of excuses

Beyond that, it was anyone’s guess as to how things would go.

My prep had been abysmal, and I’d barely had 2 months of consistent riding in my legs. I had been feeling a nausea and lightheadedness since my arrival that I couldn’t ignore, and my only goal was to help Sean get into a good position after the start. From that point on, I’d just have to see how it felt to keep my foot on the gas.

This year’s start was vastly improved over last year’s. For those of you who don’t spend your evenings watching race recaps on the information superhighway, I’ll explain.

Little Sugar starts in Coler Mountain Bike Preserve. After a mile in Coler, the field continues on a closed road for 1.8 miles before turning left onto a double track climb. At the top of that climb, 3.5 miles into the race, riders turn left onto singletrack. In 2023 the race was neutralized for the majority of that start, which meant the enormous field of racers stayed together.

The result was brutal traffic at the entrance to the singletrack. Riders who weren’t at the front of the field came to a complete stop while they waited for a conga line of bikes in front of them to start moving again. In my preparation, I became laser-focused on having enough in my legs to fight my way to the front in hopes of avoiding that traffic.

I ended up worrying a lot less once I learned that the 2024 start would be different. This year the neutral rollout was shortened to just a mile long, which meant the racing began as soon as we hit Peach Orchard Road. From there, we were racing on a closed road for 1.8 miles before turning left onto double track and heading up our first climb of the day. Reducing the length of the neutral start meant that there’d be some selection happening on that climb, resulting in a thinning of the herd before the singletrack began.

I put the gas pedal through the floor on that climb and tried to get Sean into a good position. He’s a far more capable mountain biker than I, and I wanted to do everything I could to help him to the front of the field so he could enter the singletrack unencumbered by less capable riders like myself.

It was a success. At mile 3.5 we entered the woods together, with Sean just 2 bikes in front of me. Traffic was flowing, and we were racing at a pace I could sustain. I settled in, ate a gel, and waited to see how quickly I could recover from the effort of the start.

Once I got my wits about me, I quickly became enamored with racing bicycles off-road again. I began to regulate my breathing and allowed myself to start seeing and processing the trail ahead of us. It wasn’t easy: Conditions were dry and very loose from a months-long drought, but I had found a rhythm.

We spent the next 45 minutes weaving our way through miles of singletrack on the west side of Bella Vista. Many of those trails are cut into the sides of ravines, with mild exposure and banked switchbacks as they snake their way around gullies. Focus was the name of the game, and morale was high. My body was fueled by the obscene amount of carbs I was drinking and chewing, but my mind was fed by the cheers, heckles, shakers, and even a trombone from the clusters of spectators that came to egg us on.

I lost that focus just 8.5 miles into the day. Things unraveled in an instant.

We were on a slow, sweeping left-hand turn around a tree. The trail was loose, and I entered the turn with my weight poorly distributed. My front wheel washed out. I went down hard on my left side, hearing a crunch of helmet as my head bounced off the tree. I shuffled to the left to remove myself from the course and tried to make sense of the situation while riders flew by.

I sat up and could see blood mixing with sand on my knee. The pain arrived immediately, but I could still move it just fine. I took off my helmet and saw a small dent where it made contact with the tree. Shit. A flurry of conflicted thoughts raced through my brain for what seemed like a lifetime.

I had no pain in my head, and I was perfectly lucid. The helmet would be destined for the bin at the end of the day, but the damage was minor. I did something I’d strongly discourage any friend from doing: I put my helmet back on and decided to keep racing.

My day had changed a lot in the 3.5 minutes I’d spent sitting on the side of that trail. 36 riders had passed me, and my knee was now intolerant of standing efforts. I didn’t have lofty goals for the day, but now I was simply focused on finishing. This turned out to be an immense challenge on its own.

With my knee being the way it was, I needed to ease back into the effort. The terrain was filled with punchy climbs, switchbacks, berms, and more exposure. The loose conditions made every corner and climb a struggle. Technical Difficulty (mile 18.4) was a trail that lived up to its name, and at one point I let a more skilled rider pass just so I could follow his methodical lines over wet ledges and under rocky overhangs.

At some point I had a second, much milder crash in front of a spectator who informed me that he often crashed in the same place. It was an inconsequential lapse, and I regained my confidence quickly enough to catch back onto the group I was with. I shook my head as I caught my breath. There was still so much singletrack ahead of me.

The pavement on Sugar Bridge (mile 29.2) was a welcome reprieve from the loose-over-hard trails and rocky ledges that had been battering my body. I was nearly halfway done, but I already felt so haggard that I must have looked like a bloodied Tin Man pedaling in squares. I didn’t have a plan, but if I did, it wouldn’t have looked like this.

I rolled into the aid station at Lumber Yard a mile later, where a volunteer promptly retrieved my fresh hydration pack from a pile of drop bags. I felt mixed feelings knowing that Sean must have rolled through this aid station long ago, but I reminded myself that I expected him to have a banner day on his home turf. I passed the volunteer a now-emptied pack that I’d been wearing, fumbled my way into the new one until I felt the click of the buckle through my gloves, and got back to pressing on the pedals.

Stopping to swap packs was enough time for the knee I’d crashed on to devolve into a rusty hinge. I convinced myself that the only way to loosen it up was to keep riding, so I pedaled until I caught a few riders who looked familiar from earlier in the day. They recognized me, and their whoops and hollers reminded me why I love the community around these events. They seemed elated that I’d managed to catch them, and we rode together as the trails pointed up. One was kind enough to remind me that, “You’re not really racing if you’re not bleeding.” I’d be hesitant to offer this sage advice to others, but at the time it was much appreciated.

I’m not a chatty racer, and I returned to suffering in silence with the group. We occasionally stretched apart and came together again on climbs and technical sections, but we all knew that the worst was yet to come. At mile 39.2 we made a left turn onto the hardest section of the day: The Ledges.

I’d pre-ridden The Ledges just two days before, and I think on a more typical day I would’ve felt prepared to tackle the challenging stretch of trail. However, two things were not typical about that day:

Every single inch of my body was begging for me to do anything except ride a mountain bike.
Screaming Ledges Man was present.

“LEDGES!!! THAT’S RIGHT!! LEDGES!!! LET’S F*CKING GOOOOO!!”

The ominous left turn onto the trail was now dominated by my favorite character of the day. Sometimes I wonder if he was a hallucination, but I believe he was on the right side of the turn with a chair and a very obedient dog. The dog sat patiently while his owner stood and shouted just inches from our faces, shaking a bell so hard that I feared for its well-being.

To be clear, I adore the Screaming Ledges Man and his unbridled, expletive-laden screams. He was a brief gust beneath my pathetic and sickly wings. And, I suppose if you were lost, Screaming Ledges Man could serve the practical purpose of informing you that you were at The Ledges. A town crier of sorts.

Fueled by the man’s violent exuberance, I entered The Ledges, which is a trail that no video seems to do justice. It’s an expert-level section of The Back 40 trail system, and it’s cut into the side of a deep ravine. It’s often narrow and rocky with a steep drop on the right side. I’d pre-ridden it enough on Friday to know that I wouldn’t be able to clear it all on race day, and I stuck to my plan. I rode what I could, walked what I couldn’t, and let the locals pass when it was safe to do so.

Once the worst of The Ledges was behind me, I paused briefly to accept a soda from another hero of the day. A spectator had set up a cooler and repair stand along the trail, offering hand-ups and mechanical support to anyone who’d take it. I thanked him profusely and went on my way, once again gobsmacked by the kindness of the mountain biking community in Northwestern Arkansas.

The final hurdle of the day was the winding climb up to The Castle (mile 53.5). This was another section I’d pre-ridden with Sean. It was long and I was cracked, but the climb wasn’t technical and I knew it was coming. I had nothing and was ready to give it everything.

And I did. But first, I saw something that I honestly didn’t believe.

Had I been taking a more leisurely approach to the day, I’d have stopped to rub my eyes. Instead, I just let my jaw drop. Thirteen miles after his initial appearance, Screaming Ledges Man had materialized once again. I could have sworn he was glowing as he shook his bell in a jubilant frenzy. Again he stood, leaned toward me, and bellowed.

I’ve since been told that it’s a pretty quick drive from The Ledges to the base of this climb, and I can allow myself to believe that no sorcery or teleportation was involved in this man’s exploits. Nonetheless, I was once again inspired. I stomped my way up to the top of that climb, rode around the castle, and descended. The following trail, Catapult, features enormous berms and tabletops that are quite fun under normal circumstances. These were not normal circumstances, and I just wanted to see the finish line. I took no risks, rolled down without incident, and rode the last trails into town.

I was overwhelmed and bewildered when I rode through the finishing chute on Main Street.

I had shown up with very little fitness, crashed twice, and spent nearly 7.5 hours riding 60 miles of singletrack. I was completely shattered and didn’t have much to show for it, but I was happy to see Sean and trade stories from the day.

I got my wounds cleaned, limped back to the house, and reminded myself that there were only 6 days until Big Sugar Gravel.

I didn’t know what to make of my situation, so I ate some Oreos and went to bed.