MidSouth 2026

A Recap from the Pro Non-Binary winner Robin Cummings

I have heard the red sawtooth roads outside of Stillwater, Oklahoma compared to a roller coaster. It seems fitting, then – if far from ideal – that the Nine Lives Cycling Collective’s shared first experience at the race was an unending series of peaks and valleys. At no point were any of us reticent to return, though. If you stop reading this piece right here, your one takeaway is that you need to get yourself to the Mid South next year. The second is that separate days for pro and amateur races is the new gold standard for gravel. We all agreed we’d been missing out, and I’d bet Chloë’s SSCXWC tattoo that you’ll say the same after having attended.

The ups and downs of our Mid South adventure began the day before Cade and I flew down to Oklahoma City: we had no kit. The government shutdown, presumably combined with our country’s ever-fluctuating trade policy, meant that everything had been stuck in customs in Florida for over a week, and although there was a chance it would arrive last minute, it was clear that would not be the case by Wednesday. The one exception was my national champion trim skinsuit; perhaps even customs make exceptions for nationalism. Fortunately, we have an immensely supportive and Portland-based sponsor, Castelli, and a truly unmatched contact person in Christy. She was able to pull some fit kits, so everybody would be wearing the latest and greatest skinsuits – just maybe not in team colors.

I picked up Cade en route to the best airport in the US, PDX (I will fight you over this), at 4:00 AM, and we happened to find a few other Portlanders who were also headed to Mid South on our flight. The Portland bike scene is very tight knit, so it’s no surprise that Chloë had been helping them train and prepare logistically for their first-ever century and first big race, even if Jenna busting out a bag of full-size carrots in the airport to munch on couldn’t have been further from Chloë’s diet. Our flight was uneventful, and Cade and I met up with Tori, who had flown in from a work trip in Las Vegas, in the OKC airport. My bike bag unfortunately was the victim of TSA’s neverending war on luggage and cyclists; I found it somehow missing a wheel. This was easily the smallest travel mishap of the weekend, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

As we were on our way to pick up our rental truck, Cade got a message from our AirBnb host. The water main of the house we were planning to stay at had broken, and though our host had already gotten an excavator from the city on the job, we would need to spend Thursday night in a hotel. We met up with Chloë, who had driven a van down for another sponsor, The Athletic Community, and hustled through bike builds, packet pick-up, kit distribution, groceries, and a brief combination pre-ride/openers session before finding out that the hotel booking our AirBnB host had provided us with only had two beds. Fortunately, my father was in town to help with feeds during our race and for the 50-mile race Saturday, and I was able to walk a few hundred meters to his hotel. He graciously used the pull-out couch; after reviewing feed zone plans with him, I got a good night’s sleep ahead of the big day, but was alone in this accomplishment.

We reconvened at the AirBnB the next morning and at about 11 heard a knock on the door to find our kit had made it, just in time! I grabbed my portion and split to fit in a quick interview with the Mid South media team, glad how much prep I’d done the night before. As I was leaving, Chloë was remarking on some mysterious substance that had turned her fingers blue while she was doing a final bike check. This significance of this would become clear that evening. We all reconvened in the start area, milling around nervously as we waited for our respective starts. It is here where Cade and my day’s diverged from Chloë and Tori’s – for those unaware, this was the first year the race had done separate start times, with 15 minutes between each elite field. Organizers take note – this is the way to do it!

I was nervous and excited as the countdown to our start began. My preparation had gone well, and I knew from power numbers that I had the legs to fight for a win if everything went smoothly. My coach, Chris Bagg, had helped me put a good and flexible plan together, but gravel is unpredictable, and I was lining up against some stiff competition that I hadn’t had the privilege of sharing a race course with. Rach McBride (the 2023 enby Mid South winner, and the person who has been blazing a path for elite enby athletes for years) and I had been off the front at FoCo Fondo last year, but they had dropped off because of a mechanical, and Li King, the 2024 enby Mid South champ, was a totally unknown quantity.

After a minute-long countdown that felt like a decade, the race started uneventfully. I set up shop behind Li’s wheel, uninterested in expending any effort until we hit the first unpaved section where I hoped to break up the field a bit. I was pre-empted by Jamie Bakiak, though, who came around us just before we hit dirt. I let them work for a minute, but decided to make things harder – I wanted to see how folks coped with my threshold. I looked behind me as we came back onto pavement a few minutes later and the only person with me was another PNW local, Quin Kennedy. I race with them on the road regularly, and knew I could trust them to pull through; this was close to my ideal scenario.

Quin and I quickly fell into a nice rhythm of trading off every minute or so, and opened up a significant gap. Unfortunately, they sustained a puncture after about 15 minutes together, and though it was a slow leak, they were eventually riding rim and had to stop to plug it. I kept my pace steady, but they weren’t able to chase back on and I found myself solo less than an hour into the race. From there, I settled into a pace I knew was sustainable for the rest of the day with plenty of room for more hard efforts in case I was joined by one or more riders, and focused on eating, drinking, and conserving energy (read: trying to draft the media vehicle as much as possible).

I started catching stragglers from the women’s and eventually the men’s fields in the second hour, and by the time I was able to get an idea of a gap from the media team, I discovered I had a gap of around 30 minutes. I ratcheted back my effort another notch, including a bit more caution in cornering and through the few chunkier sections the race had to offer; this was fortunate, because I felt bloated and was struggling to put down the target amounts of fluid and carbs for the last few hours of the race. I caught Tori early on; she was one of the many victims of the permanent mud pit at around mile 22, and would ultimately pull out at the mile 52 feed zone. Chlöe put in an amazing effort to hang onto a variety of chase groups despite vomiting seven times over the course of her race (we eventually figured out that the blue substance on her hands must have been from a corroded coin cell battery, which is an emetic to prevent children from swallowing them), and I saw her around mile 80. As far as I could tell, my gap remained intact and the last two obstacles of the day were the creek crossing and Bovine Bypass; I had the luxury of a cyclocross dismount to run around the creek and taking the Bypass at a mellow pace, and turned right into Stillwater to be met with the biggest hug of my life from Bobby Wintle, one of the minds behind the race and certainly its lifeblood.

The rest of the night was a blur, though not because of the champagne that found its way into my hands seconds after I crossed the line. Rach followed me in, having put in an impressive mostly solo performance, and Jamie put in third – a very impressive result, not least for somebody who recently celebrated their 21st birthday and took several wrong turns on race day! Mark my words, theirs is a name to know for the future. After an innumerable number of hugs and high-fives and a heartwarming podium presentation, with Bobby hyping us all up as we were called to the podium, we all stuck around for the elite racers who had been humbled by an unrelenting course. At some point Jamie mentioned that they were going to be sleeping in their Uhaul that night; the Nine Lives AirBnB was functional again and we had a spare bed, so we welcomed them with open arms. Community can sometimes be a nebulous term, but I struggle to think of a more obvious manifestation than making sure your competition has a roof over their head!

We all slept in and eventually wandered out towards the Bovine Bypass the next afternoon, intent on providing the amateur fields with handups. Unfortunately, we were unprepared by just how enthusiastic folks would be, and our Dr. Doom Oreos, Haribo gummy frogs, and Fireball shooters were gone nearly instantly. This stood out to me – getting to cheer on (maybe some heckling) other folks braving the same course we’d all battled yesterday was a blast, and though I won’t flatter myself into thinking anybody recognized me, I know I appreciate any stranger with carbohydrates and/or alcohol when I’m racing. It reminded me of a local cyclocross race, but with several thousand participants! My dad, having blasted his way through a 50-mile course he was convinced he’d finish last, joined us for a quick photo op on the Salsa chaise lounge, and I split from the rest of the team for a photo session and interview with Erik Mathy. Erik was part of the dedicated non-binary media team for the race, and doubling up for a photojournalism project on our field for the Radavist. He and Bobby both embody allyship – they are more concerned with supporting queer athletes and educating themselves on the issues we deal with than what others might think of them for doing so, and I’m grateful to have them on our side in a time where our humanity feels up for debate.

After I finished up with Erik, I rode out to meet up with the rest of the squad for a photoshoot with another of our local/national sponsors, BikeTiresDirect. It was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to participate in something like that, but it felt playful and natural – after all, I’d worked with Bertrand to get photography for a local junior cyclocross series, and had several years of road racing on the same team as Tyler. After a single deep breath, Chloë, Cade, Tori, and I joined up with Jamie for a quick dinner at the AirBnB (with a moment of panic after one of the two toilets started overflowing, indicating that the water main fix was very much temporary) before joining the DFL party downtown and meeting many old and new friends to celebrate with. This was easily the best atmosphere I’ve ever been a part of at a bike race, and though I’m not sure another organizer could match Bobby’s energy and excitement for every single finisher, they would do well to take notes from his approach. I had a cool finishing experience myself, but to be the final finisher and be met by a live band filming a music video celebrating you has to be a memory that will last a lifetime. We got back to our beds still buzzing and ready to pack up in the morning.

Tori, Cade, and I said our goodbyes to Chloë (driving the van back to Portland) and Jamie (driving to Arkansas to wrench at a UCI XC race the next weekend) before decamping to OKC. After dropping our enormous rental truck, checking our bikes, and meeting up with more PNW locals, everything seemed to be going smoothly… until it very much wasn’t. We boarded our flight and had just settled into our seats when we were told we’d need to disembark due to a wind hold, but that we should be ready to quickly file back on in case the weather cleared. After about 30 minutes, we got the message and the whole flight rushed back on, collectively exhaling when we took off shortly thereafter. As we were descending into DFW, though, our plane suddenly pulled up – we were diverted to Austin.

After spending some time on the plane in Austin, sustained only by a single glass of water and two Biscoff cookies over the four hours on the runway (show me an airline and I’ll show you a company that lives and breathes disdain for their customers), we did take off again and land successfully at DFW. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, we had missed our connection, and so hopped in an enormous line to see how we’d be compensated. A free re-booking would have been appropriate, but hotel vouchers and food seemed more likely (see my above thoughts on airlines). After two hours in line, it turned out we would be getting absolutely nothing, including no assistance in finding a replacement flight. Cade, our logistics expert, figured out that the soonest flight back to Portland would be Tuesday morning, a cool 36 hours away from what was already 12 hours of travel time that had actually landed us further from our destination than we had started.

With my medications and all of our spare clothes in our checked luggage, we spent another 90 minutes or so in line trying to find our them, which from an AirTag we knew were somewhere at DFW. Unfortunately, due to a continued staggering degree of incompetence on the part of American Airlines (I really cannot more strongly recommend any other airline, which is saying something), we were told that we’d need to come back the next morning for even a chance of getting our luggage. We eventually made it to an airport-adjacent hotel, and I passed out with a makeshift sock-based sleep mask for a few hours of rest.
Long story short, we “enjoyed” a day of strip-mall purgatory and a falafel-loving alien in dire need of leg day in which Cade and Tori got our bike bags but Cade’s luggage remained unlocated, and got to bed early ahead of a pre-dawn airport shuttle. In the two final speed bumps in our airport-adjacent adventure, our hotel shuttle had ignored us telling them that we had two large bike bags they needed to plan space for, forcing us to take a Lyft; and Cade had to go to the luggage counters in three separate terminals before finally locating their roller bag. As we checked Chloë’s location before taking off, it became clear than she and the venerable Ram ProMaster would beat us back to Portland by an hour or so. I still wouldn’t trade the weekend for anything, though, and can’t wait for Mid South 2027. We’ll all be out and about at local races between now and then, and get ready to dot-watch Tori at the Stagecoach 400 starting April 3rd, but the next event we’ll be traveling to as a full team will be FoCo Fondo in July. If you’re looking for an inclusive event, FoCo is it, and hit my open DMs if you have any questions – just like Mid South, I couldn’t recommend it more!

A final shout-out to my personal sponsors, who have been with me for years and without whom I’d be a mechanical mess: Sellwood Cycle Repair, who has been a driving force in women’s CX racing for over a decade via Team S&M, and HiFi Sound Cycling Components, who are deeply involved in the Oregon racing scene and a big supporter of junior racing. See you at FoCo!