A long ride

As I get more and more "afeared" of riding on the roads and want to ride more off road I am tempted to do an occasional event ride. There is a ride in honor of Tony Balboa, a local who was killed a few years ago. LINK Although I have not been doing rides that long and been either on the trainer or on trails or my short work commute. I have just become aware of gravel riding which also intrigues me. It uses mostly cyclocross bikes or other non-road race bikes and bigger tires. I first heard about it from another pediatric pathologist who has rode bikes with pretty good success for years. These gravel rides appear to be pretty big on endurance. Things like unsupported 200 mile rides in Kansas (Dirty Kanza 200) in which the first finisher takes 14 hours! Pretty overwhelming. Link to How Will see if I stay off the roads or give one of these rides a try. I still have never done a Century (ok, maybe a metric one but not a real one). Would be fun to do on one of these: