‘He decided to go big’ – Gravel Worlds racer covers 150 miles without his legs

By Peter Salter

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    LINCOLN, Nebraska (Lincoln Journal Star) — He was somewhere north of Raymond when the realization kicked in.

Alex McKiernan was off course.

He’d started his day at 6 a.m. with roughly 1,000 other cyclists competing in the 150-mile Gravel Worlds race on the dusty, rocky roads surrounding Lincoln. And he’d ridden most of it with his friend, Adam Prochaska, who was navigating for the two of them.

But McKiernan had pulled away when they were about 10 miles from the finish line, and maybe an hour from the 9 p.m. race’s cut-off time.

“I sort of got in the zone on some of the hills, and I kind of left him in the dust,” McKiernan said. “I figured he’d catch up to me.”

Prochaska never did, and McKiernan rode solo for a couple of miles. Then he stopped, looked down — and realized he didn’t see any other bike tire tracks in the gravel.

He turned around, tried calling his friend and then tried pulling up the race route. No cell service.

“So I basically sprinted the last hour as fast as I could. And that was pretty hard. I’d see someone’s light ahead and I would try to chase them down and ask for directions.”

He was finally able to get Prochaska on the phone, who gave him the final directions to the finish line. But the 15-hour deadline was nearing.

“He told me I needed to haul ass. I just sort of shouted through my teeth, ‘I know,’ and hung up.”

He’s not joking. He shouted through his teeth because he had to: They were clenching his phone as he rode the final miles.

The 42-year-old suffered a spinal cord injury in 2014 that limits the use of his legs, and he needed both of his arms to keep pedaling his trike.

McKiernan didn’t own a car until he was 26.

“I just had a bicycle. And so I always commuted by bike, and loved riding a bike.”

But he couldn’t ride as much after he and his wife, Chloe Diegel, started a family, and then launched Robinette Farms near Martell in 2010. They had livestock to raise and vegetables to grow and Farmers Markets to get to.

He was making a delivery to Open Harvest in 2014 when he was hit from behind on U.S. 77 while stopped for a red light at Saltillo Road.

His Subaru was crushed. McKiernan was flown to the hospital, spent two months as a patient at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital and returned there for the next two years for therapy.

He felt like he was in dedicated, understanding hands, he said. “I have always been continually impressed with Madonna since the first day I ended up there.”

The Madonna therapists helped him regain some use of his legs. He can stand and walk with crutches or canes, but once his legs are straight, they want to stay that way.

Which makes bicycling impossible. “There’s no way I could do that sort of reciprocal motion of pedaling a bike with legs. As soon as that leg is straight, you have to force it to bend, and you can just hear my knees grinding.”

But his arms are strong. He still kayaks whitewater rapids. And he still rock-climbs. In 2018, using an adaptive rope system and on his second attempt, he scaled the 1,800-foot Zodiac route up the granite face of El Capitan, in California’s Yosemite National Park.

He made it to the top after six days.

Adam Prochaska was one of McKiernan’s lawyers first, after the accident, but then the two became friends — getting to know each other’s families, meeting for lunch regularly.

Prochaska was awed by what McKiernan could do with limited use of his legs.

“When he puts his mind to something, that dude, he’ll do it,” he said. “I always say that if I could be half the person he is, I would be a much better person.”

Prochaska started biking a few years ago, and he began urging his friend to buy a hand-cycle and join him, sending him information about upcoming races and rides they could enter together.

Earlier this year, McKiernan bit, choosing the 150-mile Gravel Roads route.

Prochaska was surprised. Most first-time racers start with shorter routes. Maybe a 50k.

“But he decided to go big right away. I said, ‘I’ll ride it with you, fast or slow, and we’ll finish.’”

McKiernan had been researching hand-cycles, and their capabilities, since Prochaska first pitched the idea. But he worried he wouldn’t be able to maintain the 10 mph average required to finish the race in its 15-hour limit.

He reached out to a pioneering hand-cyclist — a former U.S. soldier paralyzed in Grenada — who’d ridden one across Australia.

“And I asked him, ‘Is it possible to maintain that pace for 150 miles on gravel? He basically said he didn’t think he could do it. And if he couldn’t do it, then I probably wouldn’t be able to.”

But he found a Canadian company building hand-cycles with electric-assist motors. Combined, the two forces — the hand-pedaling and the battery boost — were designed to roughly replicate the power output of a pair of legs.

McKiernan ordered his trike in March and it arrived in the middle of June, giving him little time to train for the Aug. 20 race. He started with shorter rides, 30 to 50 miles, and worked his way up to 70, his longest ride yet.

He felt strong after that ride, but he’d still only logged fewer than half the miles he’d signed up for. “There was still some gas in the tank, but I didn’t feel like there was twice as much, or more than twice as much.”

McKiernan had been so impressed with his care at Madonna he ended up on the board of its fundraising foundation. And this spring, he had an idea: Why not use the race to make money for the hospitals?

He shared his plan with a foundation officer. She said: Good idea, but you’ll have to use social media.

“And I really don’t care for social media. But then about a month before the race, I figured that it would be a wasted opportunity. So I got back on social media and had my daughter teach me how to do it right.”

He set a $15,000 goal, and raised more than $10,000 in pledges before the race started.

And when the race finally started, he was feeling good, bad and worried.

The good: “It was fun being around all those people riding, and there was so much positive supportive energy. I really thrive on that.”

The bad: Something about his trike triggered painful neurological symptoms, requiring him to stop and stretch every 25 to 35 miles. “That would help calm the pain down.”

And the worried: He brought five batteries, but he realized at about the 40-mile mark that wouldn’t be enough. If he rationed power and relied more on his arms, he couldn’t keep the necessary 10 mph pace. But if he tapped more battery power, he’d run out of juice before the finish line.

So he called his wife and had her take a charger to an upcoming checkpoint, Branched Oak Farm. He dropped off a couple of dead batteries there at Mile 58, knowing they’d be charged and ready when he came rolled back through at Mile 128.

That eased his anxiety, and he picked up the pace. The first 58 miles, he averaged 9.5 mph. The next 70, 13 mph. And once he picked up the two fresh batteries, he averaged 16 mph for the race’s final 2 hours.

That’s not typical of these long-distance races, Prochaska said.

“Normally, you get slower and slower toward the end. But he got faster and faster.”

Fast enough that McKiernan pulled away from his friend and got lost. But he still managed to cross the finish line with fewer than four minutes to spare, making him Gravel Worlds’ first Para Captain of the Gravel Seas, an honor that came with a handcrafted pirate sword.

Of the 1,000 racers who started the 150-mile route, he was among the 462 who finished.

A later — after he could lift his arms again — McKiernan learned he’d met another goal, too.

After the race, Gravel Worlds organizers sent out emails and posted on social media, encouraging its racers to donate to the Madonna Foundation.

Within days, McKiernan’s campaign total had almost doubled — to nearly $19,000.

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