How Spirit World 100 Went This Year—and Where It’s Going Next

Two weekends ago, a record crowd came to the Patagonia area to attend the sold-out 7th annual Spirit World 100, a three-night, three-day gravel bike event thrown by local organizers Heidi Rentz and Zander Ault.

“We had, roughly, our largest ever attendance this year,” said Ault, ”which was probably somewhere in the realm of like 450 people, including people joining the riders. The bulk of that  was seen on Friday and Saturday.”

Local cyclists were among the 250 registered riders who competed in the various Spirit World races, with two Patagonians performing particularly well: 13-year-old Benji Kyrz won the overall male category for the 30-mile race, and Erin O’Mara took 2nd place in the overall female category for the 100-mile distance. (Click here to see the official results for all the weekend’s races.)

Another local, Nick Beauregard of Patagonia, won the raffle for a brand new Pivot Cycles Vault Gravel Bike during the Arizona Trail benefit dinner held Thursday night at the Patagonia Lumber Company. (The event raised just over $30,000 for the Arizona Trail’s Santa Rita Trail project, which will be put toward completing the remaining 10.7 mile section between Temporal Canyon and Kentucky Camp.)

The PRT sat down with Rentz and Ault on the Tuesday following the big weekend to find out how they thought this year’s event went—and where they see it going down the road.

Here’s our conversation, which has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity. 

PRT: How did this year’s event go, relative to previous years? Do you feel you were able to address issues that have concerned the community in the past? 

Zander Ault: This was a really smooth year. The issues we’ve run into in the past, like managing the downtown road closure, were really taken into consideration in the planning phases. [The closure] isn’t set up to block people from going somewhere. It’s meant to buffer the event and provide safety for the riders, but it’s also to provide safety for local residents, too. It’s a way to let people know that something’s going on, to say, ‘Hey, we’re here. We know we’re in the way today, but we need to make sure that you know that we’re here.’ It’s taken a couple years to get everyone used to it, but it’s working. We had Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputies at either end of our downtown start and finish line venue this year and that proved super helpful. They did a great job.

Part of your event’s route out of Patagonia’s downtown and into the San Rafael Valley is also being used by South32 vehicles, and by vehicles involved in constructing the new border wall. I know the border wall contractors assured you they would keep the road clear. Did that actually happen? 

Ault: Yeah, that worked out great. Thankfully they aren’t operating on the weekends, so that was nice for the race day on Saturday, but still they were really cognizant of being in touch with all of their contractors to make sure that any other auxiliary traffic was also as quiet as possible. 

And that goes for South32 as well. This is probably the sixth year that we’ve really worked with them in a big way. And they just continue to get more supportive and more aware of the fact that safety is our number one priority—as it is theirs, as well.

Were there any issues on the route out in the Valley?

Ault: I heard of a few scenarios where folks from the ranching community either had to wait a while to pass a group of riders, or perhaps a group of riders were unsure of how an oncoming truck, or a truck coming from behind, was going to [get by safely]. It sounded like it was all fairly smooth. We’re going to have to make sure that we connect with that community in the Valley more in the future just to ensure [safety and ease of passage] for everybody.

Were there any serious injuries?

Ault: These events can see everything from a scraped knee to a death on course. Thankfully the Spirit World has had a good run, and this year we experienced that again. We had a couple crashes out there—a couple bruised knees, maybe a few bruised egos—but nothing that needed any serious medical attention. Sonoita-Elgin Fire District provided on-course EMTs this year, and thankfully we didn’t need to utilize them at all.

Heidi Rentz: I put the fear of death in the cyclists [during orientation remarks] the night before. It’s worked every year. I tell them to take it down two notches from what they would ride at home on the descents. If you fall, it’s really hard to rescue you. And if you make a wrong turn, you go to Mexico. They all listened to me. I think it’s helped with our overall vibe, as well—I think it’s kind of made people less competitive overall, and just to really be out there and enjoy the beauty of the San Rafael Valley. 

Did you see any trends in what kind of people are participating in the event?

Ault: I think what we set out to do originally with this event was to set up an atmosphere where any type of rider would feel comfortable attending. And that’s continued. I think the bulk of our registered riders are people looking to have a good time—they don’t necessarily take racing seriously, but they’re challenging themselves.

And then outside of that, with the growth of the event in the last seven years, we’re seeing people coming from farther away. That’s super-unique. We had riders from Europe this year, as well as a pro rider from Kenya. That has to do not only with the growth in the event, but just the general level of media and press that cycling-related tourism has brought to Patagonia.

I think in general we see a really great female turnout, too, because of Heidi’s presence as a race director. 

Rentz: It’s about 38% female, which for a cycling event like this, that’s really high. Usually it’s like 17% female. So that’s kind of a cool difference between our event and others. 

One special thing that happened this year was the girl who won the 100-mile distance, Caroline Torey, was 3.5 months postpartum. She did it in six hours flat!

One event you debuted this year was the opening night casual ride around the park. How did that go?

Rentz: We had probably about 15 riders. It was all kind of last minute. So I think next year we need to do a lot more advertisement with it. But when we were out there riding, it was so much fun! We just did one big loop around town and we were all just kind of hooting and hollering and riding really slow and just enjoying the moment and it was cool. It’s definitely going to become a tradition.

This year your event coincided with the Nogales Bike Classic, which couldn’t have been ideal.

Rentz: We had to change our dates for some family stuff this year. Next year, we’ll be doing it again the first week in November, same as previous years. This year it did overlap with other events, which wasn’t ideal, necessarily…but also at the same time, it was really special that so much cycling was happening on the same day. 

Ault: Thankfully, there was no course overlap. So that really made things a lot easier to manage. Our County sheriff’s department was pretty maxed out with riders on the highway and then us in the San Rafael Valley. 

It was neat to see so many riders coming through town. I was at the finish line all day, so it was really fun to see the Nogales Classic going both ways on Highway 82 and then all of us coming back in on Harshaw. It was cool.

Rentz: And the good news is—I think—both events made out with no serious injuries or anything like that.

Patagonia Bikes of course must’ve been busy.

Ault: [Patagonia Bikes’ proprietor Noe Mencias] had himself and four additional staff doing everything from fixing and maintaining people’s bikes, to installing new tires or new parts that those people brought that they wanted to put on their bikes, to selling merchandise, to  sharing local and regional resources such as routes and  details as to like where to go, where to eat, where to have a good time. So he’s definitely like mostly a bike shop, but also an information booth. And then he just recently opened up his new cafe espresso bar, which is called Visitor’s Coffee, so they were super busy serving amazing coffee.

This was a really cool year. It was the first year that we really felt like we had the time and the ability to reach out to our local downtown business sector and begin to learn how do those businesses want to be involved in outdoor recreational tourism. And so we built an opportunity with a number of options for our downtown businesses to be involved. And local businesses jumped on. They’re seeing why outdoor rec is such a big part to the annual tourism piece for Patagonia, from a business perspective, which is great. Quail Covey was super-supportive this year. Red Mountain Foods jumped on board, Queen of Cups, Mary Tolena’s Terrasol. We also had The Meading Room, Deep Sky Vineyard and Rune Wines. Everyone came to the event. So that was really, really cool. What was also neat in that is that it’s left us with a lot of room to grow.

How much bigger could Spirit World get? Could you have a bigger number of registrants than the 250 you get right now?

Ault: I think we could. But the dynamic of the event itself would begin to change a bit. One piece of feedback that we’ve always had since the beginning is that our numbers are at a great size for everyone getting to know each other. And the moment you start getting 500 or 1000 or more riders, that intimacy changes. This is just a number that really works for Patagonia right now.

So if there is a ceiling, it’s not too much above 250?

Ault: I think so. Yeah, it’s not too much above it. Do I think the ceiling is a thousand people? No, I think it’s far less.

Rentz: It keeps this event really sought after. We’ve sold out in under nine minutes every year since 2021. And that’s cool, you know? It makes this like, ‘oh, okay, there’s only 250 slots. So I better set my alarm.’ It makes it feel extra special.

You know, [Zander and I] were talking about whether we should we offer day passes, where people don’t have to pay the whole fee and they just come for the ride. But I love how everybody tries really hard to make sure they’re here in Patagonia for the whole weekend. That way they can impact the town financially as much as possible. And it’s almost like they get here and they settle in and they’re like, ‘Okay, all of us are here for three nights.’ They’ll see someone and they’ll know they’ll have time to talk to that person at some point. And so it feels like it’s a wedding, in a way—everyone kind of lets their guard down. And that feels really special.