Safe to say when you sign up to a bike race in Thailand, let alone one called ‘Dustman’, you have a certain image in your head of what it’s going to be like. On paper; 130km with 800m of climbing, a smaller field than UCI gravel qualifiers here in Australia, certainly some absolute hitters, but potentially the chance of qualification is there. This looks promising…

Safe to say, AIR Kev’s week in Thailand didn’t quite go to plan. 

With absolutely no idea what to expect, we set out on a recon ride on the Thursday morning ahead of the race on Saturday. Planning to ride the first 70km of the course, which we’d been told was the more technical portion of the course (“It was not” - in TV show narrator voice), we set off into immediate rain. The course certainly at this point was looking fast, despite being very damp. But it quickly became apparent this wasn’t going to be the cruisey day out in Thailand we had expected. From the first sector there were ruts, holes, puddles, rivers, really just floods, and that was before we got to the actual river crossings. The first of them was completely impassable, which was made very clear by a local farmer screaming at us on the approach. Then figuring out what was the only deviation to the official route for Saturday we forged ahead. 

It was immediately clear this race was going to be something else, as clarified in the pre race briefing the night before that this amount of rainfall was totally not expected and had done some serious damage to the route. It’s just what you want to hear the day before that the route ‘might be safe if it doesn’t rain tonight’, and you can guess what it did. 

Race day morning was an early start, kit ready and numbers pinned. We all piled into the van with bowls of oats and electrolyte bottles, and all people could think was, if it was that bad on Thursday what an earth are we getting ourselves into now.

6:50am we lined up in what used to look like a finish but was now much closer to Shrek’s swamp. Already signalling the death of my Speedplay cleats. Bad call I know. And off we went, no neutral roll out but a small field pretty quickly led to some camaraderie until the first sector at least. From there on it was every man for himself vs the bog. Rutted muddy lanes started taking casualties left, right and centre until it was down to five of us after only 30km. Shortly after it was my turn. A big squeeze into a crossing and off into the trees I went. Fighting but waving goodbye to the group. It was chase full gas and be dead, or set in the tempo and ultimately either option I’d have ended up in the same spot. So settling in, fully aware there was still a good 70km to go from this point, it was going to be a tough day out.

As the route climbed into the jungle, pretty nice gravel roads became smaller overgrown rollers and then the river crossings started. Relentless. Back to back for km after km. You’d get over a climb, get ready to catch your breath, only to be met with a wall of water and a scream of some already nonexistent brake pads.