Lauren De Crescenzo hits the reset button in an enormous approach this weekend to start a fourth season devoted to gravel. She’s raced for 13 years, most lately with a multiple-discipline programme with Cinch Rise, however the 2021 Unbound Gravel 200 champion now proudly declares herself as an expert gravel bicycle owner with ‘a facet of street’.
De Crescenzo left Cinch over the winter to pursue a solo privateer profession. It isn’t unfamiliar territory for the 33-year-old, who excels in time trials and hits the gasoline for solo efforts in nearly any sort of race.
“Beginning a brand new section of my profession as an impartial athlete has introduced a complete new set of challenges in addition to a brand new pleasure and freedom to racing my bike,” she instructed Cyclingnews.
“Over the previous two to 3 years, the fields have gotten a lot deeper and extra stacked than they have been only some brief years in the past. Gravel feels just like the Tremendous Bowl of biking, with all one of the best athletes from each biking self-discipline coming collectively to battle it out.”
De Crescenzo exams her legs this Saturday on the Border Wars gravel race, the place the start-finish in Franklin, Georgia is inside driving distance to her winter base in Atlanta she shares along with her husband Jim Snitzer. The 100-mile occasion is proscribed to 200 entries and traverses steeply rutted terrain throughout sections of each Georgia and Alabama with 8,000 ft of elevation acquire. Then she’ll flip her focus to Nebraska for a 3rd title at The Mid South, having received twice earlier than by 12 minutes or extra.
“My first few targets this season are defending Mid South after which placing all of it on the market at Unbound! I am aiming for podium finishes within the Life Time occasions and bettering upon my fifth-place end general in 2023. I am going to even be concentrating on another traditional gravel races reminiscent of SBT GRVL and The Rift. I might prefer to return to the UCI World Championships as I really feel I’ve unfinished enterprise over in Europe. And who is aware of in the event you’ll discover me dabbling again a little bit into the street, [like] US Professional . . . possibly.”
This season alerts a 3rd, or possibly fourth, restart for De Crescenzo, a resume which features a skilled profession on the bike, an expert profession on the Facilities for Illness Management and a mission to outlive and promote traumatic mind damage (TBI).
In 2016 whereas racing in a California criterium along with her first professional street group, she crashed and suffered a extreme traumatic mind damage which left her within the ICU of an area hospital for 3 weeks. Then she was airlifted to Craig Rehabilitation Middle in Colorado the place she realized to speak and stroll once more, then she regained the braveness to race once more two years later.
In Might 2018, De Crescenzo, then a graduate scholar on the College of Colorado-Denver, received a gold medal on the US collegiate nationals within the time trial. Two months later she received her first notable gravel race within the girls’s professional division on the high-elevation Crusher within the Tushar in Utah.
Like many US riders, she reinvented herself after the COVID pandemic as a gravel competitor and in 2021 captured the title at Unbound Gravel 200. That very same yr she was eighth within the USPro street race nationwide championships and returned to Crusher in Tushar to complete third. All the outcomes from a part-time biking profession supplied a 3rd metamorphosis, as she accepted a full-time contract to race that matched the wage of her day job, the place she labored full-time as an epidemiologist on the Facilities for Illness Management and a analysis fellow on transportation security.
By 2023 she opted to journey extra gravel and fewer street, though she received the GC at Tour of the Gila for her street group and was fourth general on the US Professional street race nationals in Knoxville. She ended the off-road season with a win on the Rad Filth Fest introduced by Wahoo and a runner-up spot at Large Sugar Gravel. She’s seen quite a lot of change in off-road racing in her few years on the prime of the game however is glad she made the swap.
“There’s been a noticeable shift in methods, gear, and dedication,” she noticed concerning the enterprise of gravel. “Placing my public well being profession on pause in 2021 after successful Unbound within the pursuit of this new self-discipline felt just like the craziest factor ever, and I struggled with the choice. Now I am seeing extra girls making the identical choice, and it does not appear fairly as loopy.Â
“After I was a roadie, I at all times felt that to ‘make it’, I would want to race in Europe the place racing is commonly tougher. Now, I feel all of the Europeans ought to come stateside and the US ought to host a UCI World Championships [for gravel]. I am nonetheless fascinated about exploring a few of the European gravel races, like The Rift, The Traka, and possibly a few of the UCI Gravel World Collection races. I really feel we’ve got one of the best gravel racing on this planet in our yard.”
Her new independence means she now has extra work to do, which incorporates managing partnerships that embrace Issue Bikes, The Feed, Castelli, Maxxis Tires, and PERC Espresso. In addition to non-profit organisations Craig Basis and LoveYourBrain. She stated it’s difficult to be “on the helm” to supervise her gear, create race schedules and coordinate journey.
“Now, I am discovering myself on the helm of varied tasks. All of the whereas, I am nonetheless simply as devoted to coaching and pushing my psychological and bodily limits on the bike,” she added.
“Past the racing, I’ve chosen to align my efforts with traumatic mind damage non-profits. With my companions, I goal to make use of the bicycle to positively affect the lives of these affected by TBIs by elevating funds for TBI non-profits and contributing to the broader dialog surrounding mind damage consciousness.”
