Lauren De Crescenzo hits the reset button in a big way this weekend to begin a fourth season dedicated to gravel. She's raced for 13 years, most recently with a multiple-discipline programme with Cinch Rise, but the 2021 Unbound Gravel 200 champion now proudly declares herself as a professional gravel cyclist with 'a side of road'.
De Crescenzo left Cinch over the winter to pursue a solo privateer career. It's not unfamiliar territory for the 33-year-old, who excels in time trials and hits the gas for solo efforts in just about any type of race.
"Starting a new phase of my career as an independent athlete has brought a whole new set of challenges as well as a new excitement and freedom to racing my bike," she told Cyclingnews.
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"Over the past two to three years, the fields have gotten much deeper and more stacked than they were only a few short years ago. Gravel feels like the Super Bowl of cycling, with all the best athletes from every cycling discipline coming together to battle it out."
De Crescenzo tests her legs this Saturday at the Border Wars gravel race, where the start-finish in Franklin, Georgia is within driving distance to her winter base in Atlanta she shares with her husband Jim Snitzer. The 100-mile event is limited to 200 entries and traverses steeply rutted terrain across sections of both Georgia and Alabama with 8,000 feet of elevation gain. Then she'll turn her focus to Nebraska for a third title at The Mid South, having won twice before by 12 minutes or more.
"My first few targets this season are defending Mid South and then putting it all out there at Unbound! I'm aiming for podium finishes in the Life Time events and improving upon my fifth-place finish overall in 2023. I'll also be targeting some other classic gravel races such as SBT GRVL and The Rift. I'd like to return to the UCI World Championships as I feel I have unfinished business over in Europe. And who knows if you'll find me dabbling back a little into the road, [like] US Pro . . . maybe."
This season signals a third, or maybe fourth, restart for De Crescenzo, a resume which includes a professional career on the bike, a professional career at the Centers for Disease Control and a mission to survive and promote traumatic brain injury (TBI).
In 2016 while racing in a California criterium with her first pro road team, she crashed and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury which left her in the ICU of a local hospital for three weeks. Then she was airlifted to Craig Rehabilitation Center in Colorado where she learned to talk and walk again, then she regained the courage to race again two years later.
In May 2018, De Crescenzo, then a graduate student at the University of Colorado-Denver, won a gold medal at the US collegiate nationals in the time trial. Two months later she won her first notable gravel race in the women's pro division at the high-elevation Crusher in 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 same year she was eighth in the USPro road race national championships and returned to Crusher in Tushar to finish third. All the results from a part-time cycling career provided a third metamorphosis, as she accepted a full-time contract to race that matched the salary of her day job, where she worked full-time as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and a research fellow on transportation safety.
By 2023 she opted to ride more gravel and less road, even though she won the GC at Tour of the Gila for her road team and was fourth overall at the US Pro road race nationals in Knoxville. She ended the off-road season with a win at the Rad Dirt Fest presented by Wahoo and a runner-up spot at Big Sugar Gravel. She's seen a lot of change in off-road racing in her few years at the top of the sport but is glad she made the switch.
"There's been a noticeable shift in strategies, equipment, and commitment," she observed about the business of gravel. "Putting my public health career on pause in 2021 after winning Unbound in the pursuit of this new discipline felt like the craziest thing ever, and I struggled with the decision. Now I'm seeing more women making the same decision, and it doesn't seem quite as crazy.
"When I was a roadie, I always felt that to 'make it', I would need to race in Europe where racing is often more challenging. Now, I think all the Europeans should come stateside and the US should host a UCI World Championships [for gravel]. I'm still interested in exploring some of the European gravel races, like The Rift, The Traka, and maybe some of the UCI Gravel World Series races. I feel we have the best gravel racing in the world in our backyard."
Her new independence means she now has more work to do, which includes managing partnerships that include Factor Bikes, The Feed, Castelli, Maxxis Tires, and PERC Coffee. As well as non-profit organisations Craig Foundation and LoveYourBrain. She said it is challenging to be "at the helm" to oversee her equipment, create race schedules and coordinate travel.
"Now, I'm finding myself at the helm of various responsibilities. All the while, I'm still just as dedicated to training and pushing my mental and physical limits on the bike," she added.
"Beyond the racing, I've chosen to align my efforts with traumatic brain injury non-profits. With my partners, I aim to use the bicycle to positively impact the lives of those affected by TBIs by raising funds for TBI non-profits and contributing to the broader conversation surrounding brain injury awareness."
