Durango’s Sarah Sturm and Payson McElveen have had crashes in some of the biggest gravel races in the country this season. They bounced back with strong performances last week at the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder.
Sturm crashed in Unbound Gravel in Kansas on May 31 and had to retire from the race. She suffered a mild concussion and hadn’t raced since. A former Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder winner, Sturm showed her experience with a quality third-place finish in the general classification of the elite women’s race on Sunday.
McElveen had a bad crash in the feed zone during the Sea Otter Classic gravel race in Monterey, California, on April 10. McElveen broke his hip and hadn’t raced since. It was also his first time racing the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder.
Despite his injury and his inexperience with the event, McElveen finished fourth in the elite men’s race general classification on Sunday.
Sturm finished third in the elite women’s field in 20 hours, 22 minutes and 15 seconds after five days of stage racing. Sofia Gomez Villafane won the race in 20:09:14 and Cécile Lejeune finished second in 20:11:49.
“I’m pretty stoked,” Sturm said. “I knew it was going to be a pretty tough battle with the lineup of women. It was a pretty small pro field, but there were seven of us who really had a good shot at winning. It could have been anyone, which is kind of exciting. So even though it was a really small field, with just 10 pro women, it was like starting each day where the break had already formed.”
The Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder is a five-stage, five-day gravel race that starts in Bend, Oregon, and spans 350 miles on mostly fire roads and dirt roads before ending in Bend.
Sturm credited Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder Race Director Chad Sperry with putting on a great event. Sturm has competed in four Oregon Trail Gravel Grinders and said it’s an “insane production” to put on with how the riders move camp every night after stages. Sturm knows Sperry’s crew works year-round to prepare for the race, clearing snow, trees and working on the roads to make sure they’re safe for hundreds of riders to race on.
“I would have liked to come away with the win,” Sturm said. “But at the end of the day, it's kind of a win-win, because you get a good week of bike racing out there. Chad, he puts on a really organized race and he keeps everyone safe. He makes it really challenging. But I like that; it’s a really hard one. I crossed the line and was kind of cursing his name, which is how it should be.”
Stage 1 began on June 25 and Sturm didn’t have the best start as riders started in Bend and battled for 80 miles before ending the day in Gilchrist. The riders passed by picturesque mountain ranges with snowcapped volcanic peaks and alpine lakes.
Sturm finished fifth in stage 1, 4:29 behind Gomez Villafane in first. Her legs felt heavy and she couldn’t stay with the leaders on the flat opening stage.
The former winner bounced back the next few days to close the gap. Sturm finished third on stage 2, which had a 4,000-foot gradual descent and climbed over Summit Lake Pass. Riders started in Gilchrist and finished in Oakridge after 92.8 miles. Sturm finished in 5:02:57.5, about 54 seconds behind Gomez Villafane in first and Lejune in second. She beat out fellow Durango resident Michaela Thompson at the line for third.
On Friday, riders competed in a stage 3 enduro day with three segments. The first was a 6.5-mile uphill time trial; the second segment was 6 miles dubbed “the roller coaster” with twists and dips; the third segment was 4 miles of downhill.
Sturm came in fourth in 1:09:29, 5:20 behind Gomez Villafane in first. She continued her strong form in stage 4, an 86.5-mile route with plenty of climbing, with four major climbs. Sturm finished third in 4:54:04.2, 2:05 behind Gomez Villafane in first.
The Durango rider’s consistency continued in the fifth and final stage, where she finished third after starting the day in McKenzie and riding 76.8 miles back to Bend. Sturm and the rest of the competitors climbed McKenzie Pass to some stunning views and the highest point of the entire race.
Sturm finished stage 5 in 5:03:29, 12 seconds behind Gomez Villafane in first. She knew after the first stage that she had a lot of work to do to close the gap to Gomez Villafane and Lejune. However, the competition was too tough and she couldn’t close the gap to the top two.
“In a perfect world, I would have made back a little bit more time had the group been a little bit larger,” Sturm said. “I don't want to say it could have been easier to gain some time back … but if there had been a couple more women who were also motivated to make back time, we could have worked together to play some team tactics there and try to get some time. It's kind of hard when it's just one or two of us who need to battle back to the front.”
Overall, it was a positive experience for Sturm with a lot of great racing. She knows she needs to work on her descending after her crash earlier in the season stymied her confidence descending. Sturm plans to work on her cadence in technical flat sections, as she knows climbing is one of her strengths.
McElveen finished fourth out of 20 elite men’s finishers in 17:41:13. New Zealand’s Cameron Jones won in 17:21:59, Skyler Taylor was second in 17:24:18 and Canada’s Robert Britton finished third in 17:32:16.
“I went into this thing predominantly to get my legs back under me and use it as a good five-day block to keep making progress toward the rest of the year,” McElveen said. “I wanted to try to get the confidence back fitness-wise, but also get comfortable riding around to the people again and kind of pushing the pace bike handling-wise. I certainly accomplished that, I would say.”
Always the competitor, McElveen hoped to win a stage and even compete for the overall win. He realizes with hindsight that it wasn’t very realistic coming back from injury.
McElveen really enjoyed the event after hearing so many good things about it over the years. It was better than advertised for him; the backcountry style of gravel racing at the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder really speaks to him and it’s the type of gravel racing he loves most.
It’s right on the edge of adventure racing, according to McElveen, with how the course shows you a new place every day with demanding terrain technically and fitness-wise.
He enjoyed the diversity of Oregon and the Cascade Mountains. There was the rain shadow inland and the high desert terrain, some of which reminded him of Durango.
It was only a week before the race that the soreness from McElveen’s hip injury at Sea Otter went away. His hip felt great after he was concerned prerace that the intensity and load of five days of stage racing would get to his hip.
McElveen finished third in the first stage, 3:24 behind Jones in first and second in the second stage, 1:12 behind Jones in first.
“I actually had a pretty frustrating day 1 stage,” McElveen said. “I just wasn't really mentally prepared. It sounds weird, but I wasn't really mentally prepared for the risk again. The race really exploded on this pretty nasty descent that was super dusty and there was no visibility. I was in the lead trio, going into that descent, and sort of lost my nerve a little bit on that descent. Maybe I just wasn't quite ready to really risk it all in the first hour of being back from breaking my hip. So I ended up losing some time that day.”
Stage 4 is when McElveen lost the most time, finishing ninth and 13:56 behind stage-winner Griffin Easter.
McElveen didn’t get a lot of sleep before stage 4. When he was injured, McElveen signed himself up for a lot of projects that happened to converge on that race week. So, he was doing a lot of work on his laptop at night between the stages, including uploading his “With Pace” podcast with daily recaps of the stages.
Therefore, there were a few nights where McElveen was only getting three hours of sleep and it caught up with him in stage 4.
He rebounded well to finish third in stage 5, only four seconds behind Taylor in first.
Fellow Durango resident Michaela Thompson didn’t finish the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder; she completed four stages and dropped out before the fifth one. Thompson showed decent pace, finishing fourth in stage 2 and third in stage 3.
“After the race week began, I found that I went into the week both mentally & physically drained,” Thompson wrote on Instagram. “I didn’t know it at the time. I was focusing so much on how I was getting there and what I needed to bring for 5 days of racing that I didn’t do the most important thing for me, which is preparing myself, mind and body, for multiple days of hard racing. I’m disappointed in myself for not doing what I needed to do going into the race, but I also don’t think I knew what that was in the moment, or even now.”
Sturm will be back in action at the Crusher in the Tushar on July 12 in Beaver, Utah, while McElveen will next race will be the Leadville Stage Race from July 25-27.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
