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Rouge-Roubaix is considered one of the toughest bike races in America thanks to steep, dusty climbs like this one these competitors tackled in 2009.

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At the top of the gravel hill, their eyes grow hollow, their mouths—caked white with salt in some places, blackened by dirt in others—hinge open, their dry tongues seeking air that is sweetened by the scent of branches waiting to burst into bud. Their diaphragms rise and fall, desperate, in the hollows beneath their rib cages. They move straight ahead at a quick pace, and then, as the road before them steepens and becomes more rocky and rutted, they sway back and forth. Their legs give out. Where once they were speeding along, they walk. It is the walk of the finished, eyes glued to the ground, thoughts of their mothers just beneath their ragged breaths.

This isn’t a war party. It’s a group of bicyclists competing in Rouge-Roubaix (pronounced roo-bay), one of the most difficult bike rides in America.

And this isn’t Colorado, with its spires that reach into the ozone, or Washington state, with its sea winds, or Alaska, where young men go into the wild and don’t return.

This is an hour's drive north of Baton Rouge, and what cyclists find here is a bit different. It’s grittier—and meaner—in its own way.

Rouge-Roubaix is in its 12th year, although nearby Baton Rouge has barely noticed it at all.

Riders from all over compete on the potpourri of roads around St. Francisville, with their seemingly 27,000-or-so different surfaces: chip seal; broad, fresh pavement; more-pothole-than-road; narrow gravel; hard-packed dirt. Rouge-Roubaix’s name serves as a tribute to the Paris Roubaix, a classic Belgian springtime bicycle race known as “The Hell of the North” because of its tricky cobblestones, narrow roads and notoriously awful weather.

In recent years, the Rouge-Roubaix—which was started as almost a dare in 1999 by cyclist Jon Anderson, a St. Francisville resident who has since moved to Minneapolis—has been labeled “The Hell of the South.”

Elite cyclists and curious amateurs come from all around the country to see if they can pick up some cash or a cool trophy, beat the course and incorporate its strange DNA into their cycling memories. Last year’s top finisher completed the 100-mile race in 4 hours, 26 minutes. But some riders will be at it for seven or eight hours—if they finish at all.

The Rouge-Roubaix includes hills so steep that even the best riders often end up walking them, pushing their $4,000 Lance Armstrong-inspired vehicles with every fiber in their bodies. There are miles of terrain marked by ruts, rocks, rubble and mud. There are bridges so low you can feel the chill of the water rushing there after winter storms, and communities tucked around Angola Prison that are all but forgotten by mainstream America. Bullet-bitten signs nailed to trees at odd angles advertise hunting clubs and such things as “Easter Bunnies for sale,” crossed out and freshly repainted with “Meat Rabbits.”

“Every single year it feels like a huge enemy that you will always try to kill,” says Baton Rouge cyclist Sebastian Alvarez. “Even if you do well, the course will, at some point, always find some way to eat you alive.”

This year’s Rouge-Roubaix takes place on March 7. It’s a date that Baton Rouge native Lars Johnson has had circled on his calendar for months. Even before he moved back to Baton Rouge from Annapolis, Md., in April 2009, he had his eye on the Hell of the South. Uninitiated into the offerings of Rouge-Roubaix, he has yet to experience all of the reasons why the race has been labeled “beautiful,” “epic” and “evil,” sometimes in the same sentence.

“I haven’t heard anything that I find scary,” he says.

Cycling coach Will Jones says Johnson might want to be at least a little worried. Jones is a seasoned triathlete who has raced the Rouge-Roubaix several times. But in his first year, he didn’t make it past mile 70. He says the first 60 miles is cake compared to what happens in the last 30 miles of the event.

“You’ve got to put the miles [of training] in,” he says. This year, he’s helping a group of cyclists prepare for the race. They put in upwards of 160 miles per weekend.

At RougeRoubaix.com, race organizers warn: “To all racers and competitors, this is not an easy race by any stretch of the imagination. You must train appropriately or this course will eat you up and spit you out.”

Yikes.

Local cyclist Lars Johnson spent many exhausting weekends training and maintaining his bike for this year’s race.

But Johnson’s an upbeat person. And he’s built up some cycling chops, too. In 2008, he competed in the Iron Cross, a 60-mile off-road bike race in Pennsylvania. Last year, the 36-year-old raced in several local cycling events as a member of the Tiger Cycling Foundation cycling team out of Baton Rouge. His strategy has been to practice systematically the more difficult gravel portions of the Rouge-Roubaix during weekends leading up to the event.

Johnson is balancing his training with the demands of a full-time, travel-intensive job as a field engineer for Agfa Healthcare, and a busy family that includes son Liam, who recently celebrated his first birthday, and wife Ami.

On weeknights, he typically gives Liam a bath, kisses him and Ami goodnight, then puts his bike on an indoor trainer to knock out the miles indoors in the still of the night.

“My wife has been really understanding. She knows it’s important to me and it’s good for my health,” Johnson says.

So grueling is the course that cyclists frequently have to dismount and walk their bicycles for a while. Here, Leroy Richard catches his breath in last year’s race.

On race day, he’ll get up early, pull onto I-110 North, and head to St. Francis Inn on the Lake. The ride will start off deceptively easy for the trained bicyclist, on rolling hills over smooth roads. Johnson will likely find himself in a swiftly moving pack of riders. Small talk will blend with the clickety-clack of shifting gears and rotating cranks. Then the riders will turn into the first gravel section. It will be downhill. The leaders won’t slow down. Some will drag a toe in the gravel to gain purchase as the road carves downward across terrain that was pushed up, as if by a tire iron, when the Mississippi Delta was laid down.

Considering the rough terrain of the Rouge-Roubaix, many who are preparing for it mull over riding it on a mountain bike. But that’s a big rookie mistake, veterans say. There are simply too many miles of relatively smooth pavement to justify doing it on a heavy bike frame with slow, knobby wheels.

Race organizers promise that the Rouge-Roubaix will test both humans and their bikes. Rutted roads like to puncture tires and bend wheels. Check your bike after the race, they say, just to make sure it still works.

Johnson plans on entering the race on the same Trek 1200 he’s raced and trained on since 1988.

When the riders emerge from the first section of gravel, there will be fewer riders in the pack. Johnson admits that riding the narrow gravel roads in a crowd will be a difficulty for which he can’t fully prepare.

“I feel confident in riding the gravel, but then again, it will be different with a group,” he says.

The race will then climb toward the town of Woodville, Miss.

During his training, Johnson has frequented Woodville’s convenience store, with its fried chicken and hefty jars of pickled eggs floating in red water. They don’t sell bottled water here, but he’s learned to make do.

Rouge-Roubaix takes cyclists through 100 miles of rugged terrain north of St. Francisville and into Mississippi.

On race day, Johnson will jockey to grab an extra bottle of water from bystanders in Woodville at mile 45. There’s no guarantee he’ll actually land the liquid, which—on a day like this—might be more precious than gold. Water bottles have a strong tendency to come flying off the bike during the race. In the heat of competition, the racers won’t ride back to pick any bottles up.

The most difficult parts of the race are still to come. The meanest section comes at mile 66, at what’s known as the Pond Store Climb. It’s the stuff of cycling legend, lined by beech and oak, some with their roots exposed, rocky, narrow, and steep enough to make staying on the bike difficult. At its base is an enclave of trailers, yards strewn with rubble and a bridge that consists of seven boards spaced out in two uneven sets, roughly a truck’s length apart.

Johnson says “Deliverance-like” is a pretty good description of this area. But he’s had some good encounters with the locals. On one training ride, as dark descended, an old man in a pickup truck pulled up alongside Johnson and asked him if he was near where he needed to be.

“They looked at me strange, of course. I am wearing Lycra and such. But they were all nice,” Johnson says.

It’s tough to make it to the top of the Pond Store Climb without walking. At its summit rests the Tunica Hills Wildlife Management Area and the Pond Store, whose wide wooden floors have grown soft over the decades. It’s a museum of antiques, oddities, and dust-covered, off-brand candy bars that the swiftest racers in the Rouge-Roubaix will miss as they make their bid for the finish line, still 34 miles away. Those who care to take a break can stop and drink Cokes from small bottles on the store’s broad porch. Johnson doesn’t plan to be among them.

The siren song of the finish will be ringing in his ears.

“What I look to take from every race is one that I can be proud,” Johnson says. “I don’t want to be embarrassed by my performance. I want to look back and know I gave it my all and that I had a good time. That’s my biggest thing.”

Want to find out how Lars Johnson does? Come back March 9 for a race report, or learn more at rougeroubaix.com.

Amy Alexander is a Baton Rouge-based freelance writer and longtime competitive cyclist. She regrets, and is glad, that she has never competed in the Rouge-Roubaix.