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Riding her bicycle around three volcanoes and three lakes, Lexingtonian Cynthia Frazier won the women’s division and placed eighth overall in the Across Andes gravel race late last November. She followed up that effort by winning another mountainous race, 550-mile Transcordilleras race in Colombia in February.
In the Across Andes race, Frazier, 30, took on the Andes Mountains and finished the 630mile route in just over 68 hours and 39 minutes, averaging 18 kilometers per hour (11.18 miles per hour), faster than the winning men’s time in 2021 and beating the winning women’s time in 2021 by 14 hours and 28 minutes.
This type of bicycling racing was different from the Tour de France, where the riders start and finish each stage at the same time and location. Instead, Frazier and her competitors started at the same time, but the clock never stopped running, and riders decided when they were going to rest.
There were mostly women from Chile in the competition, and the bicyclists followed a route south of Santiago, the capital of Chile.
“It was super pretty,” said Frazier. “The landscapes really changed. It’s kind of why I like this type of racing.”
November is late spring in Chile, so it was very hot when the bicyclists started, with a high of 90, but it started to get colder as they got to the coast, getting down to 45 at times, but there was no rain.
One of Frazier’s best memories was seeing a lot of stray dogs while riding, including one dog named Daisy that ran along with the bicyclists for a while.
One disappointment was that the 2021 women’s winner, American Lael Wilcox, decided not to do the race, but that didn’t take away from Frazier’s win. Last September, Frazier raced Wilcox in Spain and almost beat her, placing second.
Frazier spent more than two weeks in Chile, getting to know the area and getting plenty of chances to practice her Spanish with the locals. -The race in Colombia last month provided some different challenges. It started in Cali, Colombia, and went into the Cordillera mountain range of the Andes Mountains. The race had a total elevation gain of 70,450 feet. “It was the hardest race I’ve ever done due to the elevation gain, heat and humidity and overall altitude in Colombia,” she said.
At one point during the race, Frazier crashed on the pavement while going 25 miles per hour, but some of the other bicyclists helped her get back on her bike. She recovered to place fourth overall and first among women, completing the 550-mile route about 90 hours, finishing at 2:30 a.m. in the pouring rain. Frazier said that, after finishing, she was “ready for a hot shower and a long sleep.”
Following the race, Frazier posted this on her Instagram page: “Broken. The word can be used in many ways in reference to a thing or a person. When an ultracycling event is the topic, it means you’ve done the job correctly. You’ve given all you had and you came out the other side as changed, successful, resilient.
“When the topic is life itself, broken means something isn’t right,” her post continued. “It could mean you’ve given all you had and you came out the other side changed, unsuccessful, and probably hurt. Life has times of ups and downs. For me I’m in a weird place that’s both up and down. I’m experiencing extreme feelings on both ends of the spectrum, sort of like you do in an ultrarace. I’m not one to be down for long, but some things in my life have brought me there recently. And unlike an ultra, it’s hard to just tamp down the emotions and push forward. Life has been hard and that’s literally just how life is. It can’t be all roses and daisies all the time. I am learning how to work through the tough times rather than tamp them down and move forward. This year is shaping up to be the most challenging of my life in so many ways, good and bad. So let’s see what you have in store for me 2023.”
With these two mountainous races in South America behind her, Frazier plans to recharge and train for a much flatter race on June 3, the Garmin Unbound Gravel in Kansas, a 200mile race that she won last year.
Locally, Frazier is organizing the third annual Gravista bicycle races, which will take place in Buena Vista and the surrounding areas on the weekend of May 12-14. Last year, the races successfully raised money for two $1,000 scholarships for Parry McCluer High School students to be used for vocational or trade schools.
Originally from Arlington, Frazier is a 2010 graduate of Washington and Lee University who began racing competitively at James Madison University. She raced in triathlons while at JMU and especially enjoyed the bicycling section. After taking on a few bicycling races, she advanced to the Domestic Elite Level, the top level of road bicycling in the United States.
She graduated from JMU in 2014 with a major in media arts and design and now works as a wedding videographer for her company, Frazier Films. She enjoys spending time with her husband, Brian, a local plumber who is also an avid bicyclist.
Those on Instagram can follow Frazier and see photos from her adventures at https:// www.instagram.com/wattwagon.
