On May 22, more than 1,000 cyclists are expected to take on the hills and canyons crossed by gravel roads in the desert between Fruita and Utah, but the effort to get the new event to the starting line has had its own ups and downs.
When Morgan Murri, founder of Desert Gravel, the company organizing the event, started planning his Colorado-to-Utah race, called Co2uT, the COVID-19 pandemic was still fresh. He was planning for an October 2020 date and started signing people up on June 1 of last year.
âRight as we were trying to develop this buzz and this idea behind it, as weâre getting energy, COVID is just crushing the world,â Murri said.