Alison Tetrick scanned over the horizon of the Flint Hills of Kansas and realized she was completely alone.

It was an 80-degree June day under cloud-covered skies, and Tetrick was about 165 miles into her first ultra-gravel race—the 2017 Dirty Kanza 200, a double century behemoth with a failure rate of nearly 40 percent for the 1,000 riders who attempt it each year. At that moment, doubt, exhaustion, and a sense of isolation were starting to creep their way into her mind even as she held the overall lead at each checkpoint.

"I'm never going to finish this thing," Tetrick thought to herself as she rode over another rolling hill.

Two painful minutes up, two minutes down. No time to rinse off the thick coat of swirling dust—just repeat.

The 33-year-old Tetrick had ridden her bike on almost every continent except for Antarctica and Africa in her nine years as a pro road cyclist, but this was something new. She had never raced more than 120 miles in a single day before, let alone 206.

After noticing a couple mirages in the distance, she was finally caught with 20 miles until the finish line by the likeliest of riders that day, Amanda Nauman, aka the two-time reigning Queen of Kanza.

As they rode into the east-central Kansas town of Emporia, Nauman was the first to attack. When she did, Tetrick immediately responded down the finishing straight—albeit with cramping legs and increasingly spotty vision.

At the line, Tetrick’s time read 11 hours, 40 minutes, and 41 seconds. In a surreal moment amid thousands of cheering spectators, she realized she had smashed the course record by 30 minutes. She was the Dirty Kanza champion.

“I asked my mom after, ‘Who sprints after 206 miles?’ And she said, ‘A very desperate person.’ Which is probably true,” Tetrick recalled.

Now the reigning gravel world champion, Tetrick is sharing a nine-week sample of her training journey with FloBikes Pro subscribers—beginning Monday, May 7—as she prepares for her return trip to the Dirty Kanza this summer. And while her goal, of course, is to repeat her historic win on June 2, she also wants to continue building her connection with the growing number of cyclists venturing onto gravel roads.

“That whole day, the rest of the time, was pretty life-changing for me in a way that I just met this new community that I felt like I always knew and that I knew that I always wanted to be a part of,” Tetrick said. “Once Dirty Kanza was over, I knew I was completely sold to just wanting to do more gravel adventure racing, challenge myself as an athlete further, and see where that went.”

Pushing Her Boundaries

Switching to gravel racing may seem like a radical left turn for an established road pro such as Tetrick, but it’s far from the first time she’s tried something new—and found almost immediate results.

Born and raised on a cattle farm in Santa Barbara County, California, Tetrick grew up as a cowgirl but enjoyed her first taste of athletic success after joining in on one of her mother’s tennis club lessons. Eventually, Tetrick earned a scholarship to play at the NCAA Division I level at Abilene State in Texas before a knee injury cut her All-American career short.

In its place, she poured her focus onto her academics: She has a master’s degree in clinical psychology, specializing in neuropsychology.

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Missing “the carrot up the road” that comes with all competition, at 23 Tetrick gravitated to triathlons and road cycling under the advice of her grandfather, Paul Tetrick. Her grandfather, 86, is still the first person Alison calls after a disappointing race and also happens to be a 17-time USA Cycling Masters national champion.

After winning a couple cycling races in Northern California, Tetrick received an invitation from USA Cycling to train at a talent ID camp at the United State Olympic Center in Colorado Springs, CO, in 2008, beginning her nearly decade-long journey with the U.S. national team and pro squads such as Astana BePink, Optum-KBS, and Cylance.

Her accolades as a pro include the Giro Donne team championship and a bronze medal at the world team trial championships. But now, Tetrick is focused on a different kind of challenge.

“I was at a point in my road racing career where I felt like I had done every race that I really wanted to and needed to do,” Tetrick said. “I had gone to Worlds, Pan-Ams, raced everywhere and I thought, 'What's next?' You know, I was just kinda itching for something else. How do I push my cycling boundaries or find new events that I want to go to?”

Before racing at Dirty Kanza for the first time, Tetrick was already good friends with former women’s record holder Rebecca Rusch and lived in the same town as former men’s race winner Yuri Hauswald.

Tetrick would also see posts about the race on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where she has a huge following and is a well-known brand ambassador for Specialized.

“You see the stuff on social media and you're like, 'Oh that kinda looks fun and brutal,' and for a couple of years I was watching it, maybe slightly stalking it, you know, quietly,” she said. “I asked my professional team at the time, Cylance Pro Cycling, if I could put Dirty Kanza in my schedule. Doing a 200-mile gravel race doesn't always work really well in a World Tour calendar so it took a couple years but they were like, ‘OK fine, this is the year. You can do it but you have to do Tour California right before and figure out how to do it all.’"

Learning To Win Ugly

Over the last six years, Tetrick says she’s completely transformed her cycling career thanks in large part to the work she’s done with Dean Golich, the head coach of Carmichael Training System. Golich has also trained a former multiple-time DK winner in Rusch and coached 2016 Olympian Mara Abbott, who placed fourth in Rio.

“I know if he's coached some of these other incredible women that he can also understand and deal with my quirks and weirdness,” Tetrick said. “But you know, I think that's the real important part just like any relationship, but between a coach-athlete, it's going to be transparency and complete trust.”

But that doesn’t mean there aren't times when they butt heads.

During one week of training, Golich had a frustrated Tetrick repeat the same 3-by-20-minute lactate threshold intervals on back-to-back days, even after hitting power-record numbers on each attempt.

Each time she asked for a new workout, Golich replied, “Great job, do it again.”

“I was getting so mad,” Tetrick said. “The next day I go out and go hard as I can, fall off my bike. It was ugly, there might have been vomit.

“I call him, I said, ‘I quit. I can't do these. I cannot physically do anymore above 200 watts. I cannot do it.’ He goes, ‘Oh. So you finally figured out what I meant 'to go as hard as you can?’"

While that was the first and last time Tetrick went through such a grueling test, Golich encouraged her to enter a local 40km time trial two days later. Tetrick expected to race poorly against local riders she’d beaten in the past, and was worried it would hurt her confidence.

“I only won by 15 seconds, so over 40 kilometers that's not much,” Tetrick said. “Average probably, quite a bit of watts less than I'm capable of. And I said, ‘I won but I barely won. At one point I just put it in one gear and just didn't let myself shift and did like 50 RPMs to try to just finish the thing.’”

Golich responded, “Good. You learned how to win ugly.”

The lesson in toughness and self-belief proved valuable for Tetrick as she transitioned to gravel racing, where she is the first to admit she is “a complete roadie who then started dabbling in gravel racing.”

“When I woke up after Dirty Kanza, the way my body felt was like the worst hangover/flu/euphoria that you've ever had,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, I did something my body had never done before.’ Which after being a professional athlete for nine years, NCAA athlete, you think you've done it all, and you're like, ‘Oh no, I just pushed past a whole new boundary and now I can't wait to see what my body can do.’ So it's a matter of learning what you can do, how to support your system to do that, and kinda keep challenging yourself.”

Humanizing The Sport

Emporia is a charming city of 25,000 for most of the year, but for one weekend in June, it becomes “Burning Man on bikes,” as Tetrick likes to describe it.

Locals embrace the event by painting the streets with chalk and lining up on the downtown streets at 6 AM to cheer on the throngs of self-described “bike dorks” who flock to spend an 11-hour day or more in the saddle.

“When I've gone to gravel events after Dirty Kanza, it's kinda the same core of bike family that we all have . . . the gravel community is super fun,” Tetrick said. “It's much different than the professional world tour road community, who I love but this is a little more, little more grungy, a little bit more about the after party and just kinda the completion credit, too.”

Tetrick believes gravel racing is seeing a boom in popularity right now for a number of reasons, including rider safety. Cycling off the beaten path means fewer people are riding on crowded and sometimes dangerous roads.

But above all, Tetrick sees this wrinkle in the cycling scene resonating with those searching for a new sense of adventure and a deeper sense inclusiveness between the sport’s elite competitors and newcomers alike.

“I think coming back into these grassroots gravel events and interacting with that community it has provided this really incredible opportunity to interact with awesome people out on bikes,” Tetrick said. “Hopefully inspire them to be active and kinda join the fun without being aloof and kind of a way just as a show or performance level.

“So if I can go can and mass start this event with you and we can all go and ride it together, you may finish ahead of me, behind me, it doesn't matter. But at the end of the day, we challenge ourselves on a bike and did it together. I think that's one of the coolest things about gravel.”

Perhaps Tetrick’s fondest memory from last year’s race happened right after she crossed the finish line. Her friend Rusch, whose record Tetrick just broke, was the first person to greet the new champion with a champagne shower. After taking a celebratory sip—and maybe a shot of bourbon—Tetrick stayed up until the course was closed at 2 AM, welcoming back the last of her fellow gravel grinders after a long day in the hills.