It’s a well established fact in this journal that I do not, not, not like gravel roads. I have over three dozen routes laid out in Cyclemeter, and of these only a handful include any gravel roads at all, and where they do, those roads generally meet two criteria:
A) The surfaces are not well attended to by the township road crews; and
2) There is no realistic better way to complete the route than to follow that particular road.
And when I say they are not well attended to, I mean that they are usually more gravel in name than in actuality. Well worn, rarely resurfaced - what some call “hero gravel”.
In large part, this is not an issue. Although we live in an intensely rural area here in northern Illinois, most of our country roads have been upgraded to tar and chip over the years, and that appears to be a continuing effort on the part of local townships. Part of the road I live on was gravel up until about four years ago, and I was surprised last summer to find a mile of rocks that I was expecting as part of one of my routes was now, well, not. It is, in fact, rare at this point to find more than 2-3 miles of continuous gravel anywhere within a 10-15 mile radius of our home.
Of course, my rules about gravel change when the snow falls, the white and/or icy coating mitigating the unpleasant effects of the rocky surface. But as the snow has been melting away, a thought occurred to me about those surfaces.
It was a particularly blustery day that started the thought process, with winds coming out of the south at 20-25 mph. I wanted to ride, but I had limited time, so I needed a shorter route. The problem is that my shorter routes almost all run predominantly north-south, so that meant I’d be struggling against a powerful headwind for nearly half of the ride one way or the other. But I did have one route on the list with the longest portion running east-west, and only a short loop running north-south. A part of north-south section is gravel, though, which made me pause.
Looking back, I realized that I’d last ridden this particular route in 2013, and I had made a route with that section of road in it for a single ride last year, which I didn’t even bother to name because I didn’t want to encounter the gravel again.
But the thought that occurred to me was this: isn’t this the season that you would expect the gravel to be in the worst repair overall? Between the plows going over it in winter, the erosion from the snowmelt, and the likely inability of the road crews to do anything on them until the weather cleared, if the surface was ever going to be comfortable to ride on outside the dead of winter, wasn’t this likely to be it?
Besides, I thought, I could ride that gravel section going north, with the 20+ mph wind at my back - so if I was wrong, at least I’d have help.
It seemed like it was worth a try, so I headed out. The gravel shows up about 4 1/2 miles into the ride, and it persists for about two miles after it starts. I was pleased to find that the road looked like I’d hoped - awful, I suppose, from the perspective of a road commissioner, but awesome from a cycling perspective. Most of the gravel was washed or worn away, and what remained was concentrated in the center or off to the extreme outside. My actual lane of travel as I rode northward was, for all intents and purposes, a hard-packed dirt road.
This worn, rock-free surface, combined with the wind at my back resulted in the extremely rare occurrence of my time on the gravel actually being faster than some of my time on pavement. Now - that’s faster, but not necessarily particularly fast - I averaged about 13.4 mph on the split that reflected a full mile of gravel riding, but I did manage to hit a top speed of just over 22mph on a (downhill) section of that mile.
What’s the takeaway from all of this? Spring out here on the Illinois prairie, is mostly a very windy time. Wind speeds between 15 and 25mph are not at all uncommon in March and April - this is, after all, why we are surrounded by giant white turbines. This means that choosing routes on any given day is a matter of contending with the wind direction, with my goal usually being to have the wind at my back for the latter portion of the ride, when I’m more fatigued. While lengthy sections of gravel aren’t really a thing in my area any more, having shorter sections available and rideable because of wear and tear increases my route options when the wind kicks up.