Life Time Launches Big Sugar Gravel Race in Arkansas
On Friday night, Kimo Seymour, president of Life Time Events and Media, along with Dirty Kanza’s co-founder Jim Cummins and operating officer Lelan Dains, announced a sister gravel event, the Big Sugar, in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The 107-mile course will wind through the Ozarks, and will include nearly 9,000 feet of climbing.
Big Sugar will take place on October 24, 2020.
Rumor has it they build two miles of trail a day in the rugged Ozark mountains surrounding Bentonville, Arkansas. I couldn’t confirm that exact number, but there’s zero doubt that mountain biking is booming in Northwest Arkansas, home of more than 200 miles of mountain biking via the Oz Trail system.
Until now, the gravel scene was lagging behind. But that’s all about to change in a big way—or should I say, in the Big Sugar way.
On Friday night, Kimo Seymour, president of Life Time Events and Media along with Dirty Kanza’s co-founder Jim Cummins and operating officer Lelan Dains, announced a DK sister gravel event, the Big Sugar—NWA (a.k.a. North West Arkansas) Gravel, a 107-mile course of rugged roads through the Ozarks with nearly 9,000 feet of climbing that will take place on October 24, 2020.
“Our team, including myself, is passionate about cycling and these gritty, on-dirt races that allow riders to participate in an event that is bigger than themselves—that enriches their lives as well as the communities they take place in,” Seymour said in a press release. “As we see more riders move from pavement to dirt, we are honored to be at the forefront of this change and be in position to create truly unforgettable experiences that help grow and impact the cycling community in a positive way.”
Commenting on the host site, Seymour added, “Bentonville has become a hub for cycling, but it doesn’t yet have an iconic gravel race. We’re really excited to bring the same Leadville and Dirty Kanza feel here in Bentonville and produce a life-enriching event that welcomes every rider, from beginner to experienced.”
Riding the Big Sugar
Along with about 20 others, I had the opportunity to preride 70 miles of the Big Sugar—named after Big Sugar Creek, a 47-mile waterway that starts near the Arkansas state line and weaves through much of the course—on Saturday morning.
Our preride started about 35 miles into the route in the little town of Pineville, which will serve as the first checkpoint for the Big Sugar race. Within two blocks, we dropped in—and seemingly back in time—to our first section of gravel for the day.
Shortly upon leaving any populated area within the Ozark mountains, you feel immediately remote, crunching over quiet roads that carve through ancient, pocked sandstone cliffs, which beckon the inner rock climber to dig in and ascend their rugged slopes.
Wear wool socks. Regardless of the weather you’ll encounter in the capricious month of October, your feet will get wet. The myriad rocky stream crossings range from splish-splash whee to hub-deep submersion woah.
There will be dogs. Big dogs. Little dogs. No mean dogs that we found. But plenty of loose dogs that can’t resist the sweet siren call of a pack of cyclists whirring by. A stern “Go home!” accompanied by a splash of Rocktane Summit Tea sent even the most persistent canine on their way.
Bring your climbing legs. The sloping, rolling, sometimes punchy terrain serves up a steady stream of grade changes, more than a few of which are steep and sharp.
Speaking of sharp, much like the Flint Hills of Kanza, the roads through the Ozarks are blanketed with rocks that take their fork tines and knife blades to flimsy rubber as they devour the tires of unprepared riders. Choose yours wisely. A little tread and some reinforced sidewalls will help keep your spare tubes and tire plugs in your packs.
If you find your day not going according to plan, you’ll be able to spill some tears into a beer at the Whistling Springs Brewing Company, a rustic and charming microbrewery in rural southwest Missouri, just north of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, that serves as an aid station about three quarters of the way through the Big Sugar course. Just bear in mind that you’ll need to ride back out on the same swooping, steep gravel road that got you there.
For two days leading into our course preview and for about three hours of the ride itself, it poured rain. The largely sandstone surfaces sop up even copious amounts of water like a sponge, so even though you may be soaked—and oh, were we soaked like all the fish in the sea—from rain and multiple stream crossings, you’ll be able to keep rolling without a packed up drivetrain or clay-covered wheels.
The final quarter of the course is tamer and faster than the 75 miles before it, as you cruise over ridges lined with cow-covered pastures. The finish line isn’t set in Ozark bedrock at this time, but there’s rumor that it might be atop the second of a pair of chunky, quad searing dromedary humps that bring you back out of the wilderness and into Bentonville about 106 miles into your day.
In other words, don’t let the relatively short distance fool you into thinking this is going to be easy, especially if you plan on racing for results.
“This isn’t going to be a course that lends itself to drafting and road team tactics,” event director Gabbi Adams who designed the course and is leading the operations along with MTB hall of famer Nat Ross and the Dirty Kanza team, told Bicycling. “It’s punchy and rocky and doesn’t really ever let up.”
Adams, who hails from Stillwater, Oklahoma—the home of the infamously challenging Land Run 100—is anything but new to this gravel game. In 2017, she recruited 11 women to race DK200 on single speeds. She won, and the entire band of one-geared wonder women finished. She also completed all 350 miles of the inaugural DKXL on a single speed. Adams gets gravel.
Gravel Going Forward
The race will include the signature Big Sugar course as well as The Little Sugar option, which will be 50 miles long, including more than 4,000 feet of vertical gain.
The Big Sugar will coincide with Outerbike Bentonville, an outdoor bike and gear demo event, featuring dozens of exhibitors that sets up next to the world famous Crystal Bridges Museum and funnels into the flowy Slaughter Pen trails and beyond. Registration for the inaugural event opens November 15, 2019.
The race will cap at about 750 riders for the first year, and if the popularity of Dirty Kanza and other gravel events is any indication, will likely sell out fast. (In fact, Dirty Kanza will be expanding the size of its fields yet again next year, accepting 3,800 riders through registration for the 2020 edition. They will allow 1600 of them will be allowed into the 200-mile main event, and the rest will fill in the shorter race categories. DKXL will open its field size to 150 riders.)
And stay tuned, because there are likely more new events to follow, says Jim Cummins, who now serves as Life Time’s chief gravel officer. Cummins employs a business cycle metaphor when talking about the state of gravel today.
“In any business there are four phases: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline,” he says. “I believe gravel has just entered the growth phase and will continue to grow for some time.”
Dirty Kanza events manager Dains anticipates that there will be about a half dozen Life Time branded gravel events across the U.S. over the next few years. These events, like the new Big Sugar, are standalone races and not made to serve as qualifiers for DK200. But if you do complete the Big Sugar, you’ll get a lottery ticket for a chance to race DK200 the following year.
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