More than a decade ago, Amanda Rauh-Bieri, ’17, and Brett Frazer, ’17, met in Professor Edward Cooper’s Civil Procedure class. This spring, they raced through 201.95 miles of Spanish countryside in a gravel bike race called the Traka.
Rauh-Bieri, who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Frazer, who lives in San Diego, have stayed friends since law school. They met up in Catalonia, Spain, in April for the Traka.
Both were cyclists to some degree before they arrived at Michigan Law. When Rauh-Bieri graduated from high school, she and her dad biked approximately 250 miles in Michigan: from their home in Holland, north to Traverse City, and back.
That experience planted the seed for amateur endurance sports, she said.
“It took a while for that to find its way back to me in my 30s, but I look back at that as a pivotal memory as I was graduating high school and going to college, and a great memory with my dad.”
Frazer grew up mountain biking in Alaska and picked up gravel biking around the pandemic. His first gravel race was in 2022, and he’s competed in dozens of races since then.
“I got pretty addicted immediately,” he said.
A few years ago, Frazer convinced Rauh-Bieri to get a gravel bike and enter a gravel race. She didn’t even know what gravel biking was at the time. It’s somewhere in between road biking and mountain biking, and a gravel bike is basically a road bike with thicker tires, she explained.
Rauh-Bieri got hooked, too. Last year, at Frazer’s urging, she signed up for her first 200-mile race, called Unbound, in Kansas. “I was initially like, ‘I can’t do that. That sounds crazy. Where would I find the time? What if something goes wrong? How am I going to train for that?’” she said.
But, with the help of a coach—who also coaches Frazer—she figured out how to manage her training schedule. Both of them raced Unbound in 2025. When they enter races together, they don’t ride together, but they like to share the race experience and support each other.
Frazer said about Rauh-Bieri, “Her improvement from that race last year to this year was an unbelievable, incredible improvement in fitness. She’s a very gifted athlete.”
At the Traka, Rauh-Bieri was the 15th woman out of 53 to finish, and the first American woman. She came in 506th overall. The fact that she can excel in her legal career and in 200-mile gravel bike races serves as “a reminder that you can have a life—a fun life, a great life—outside of just being a lawyer,” Frazer said.
The appeal of gravel cycling
Both Frazer and Rauh-Bieri said cycling helps balance their lives as lawyers. Rauh-Bieri is a member in the litigation practice at Miller Johnson in Grand Rapids.
“Litigation can be pretty competitive and comes with a certain kind of stress and a certain kind of mental load,” Rauh-Bieri said. “If my only outlet is through work, sometimes it’s not as healthy,” but racing lets her indulge her competitive side in a different way.
Frazer agreed. “Bike racing is a healthy outlet,” he said. “It’s a space where I can let that competitive part of me breathe.” Frazer is a legal engineer at Harvey, a legal AI platform, where he helps design and implement AI programs and workflows for attorneys.
Rauh-Bieri finds cycling restorative. “I’ll go out and do a two-hour ride after work, and it’s just mentally and physically refreshing. That helps me reset after a tough day at work and also helps me work through difficult problems. It makes me a better litigator,” she said.
It also feels freeing, Frazer said.
“There’s just something about when you’re on the bike and you’re going fast, you can feel the wind on your face and on your arms, and you can hear the wind rushing by your ears.”
He also likes being able to cover long distances on his bike, and when he first moved to San Diego, it was the main way he explored the area. After the Traka, he did a five-day bikepacking trip for hundreds of miles through the south of France—not racing, just enjoying it, he said.
Gravel bikes handle dirt roads well, and some trails, so they’re a good way to get out and enjoy the outdoors, Rauh-Bieri said.
The race
The Traka was a way for these Michigan Law friends to reconnect and to try something new. It was Rauh-Bieri’s first overseas race, which meant figuring out how to bring her bike on a plane for the first time. Frazer had raced a shorter race in Iceland before, but this was his first 200-miler outside the United States.
“The Traka was fantastic,” Frazer said. “You’re in the Spanish countryside in Catalonia, and there were moments when we could see the Mediterranean, and there were moments when you’re biking through these little Spanish villages and next to churches that are hundreds of years old.”
He added, “I probably heard seven different languages when I was on the course.” Frazer finished 456th overall, and 448th out of 868 men.
Rauh-Bieri and Frazer stayed in a house with other competitors from the United States and Germany. “We had a fantastic experience cheering each other on,” Rauh-Bieri said.
In the weeks leading up to the race, Rauh-Bieri started to question her decision. She said to herself: “What was I thinking? A lot could go wrong. This is stressful. I’m taking time out of work. This is my vacation, and I’m pretty stressed about it.” But, she realized, she had trained hard for it and was prepared.
Rauh-Bieri and Frazer enjoyed the thrill of the race and the sense of accomplishment when it was over.
“There’s something about going for a certain accomplishment that feels a little bit out of your reach, but that’s also something that you enjoy,” Rauh-Bieri said. “Setting a goal, working for it, and then seeing the fruition of that hard work is pretty satisfying.”
Banner image: Amanda Rauh-Bieri races in the Traka, a 200+ mile gravel bike race in Spain. She and her fellow ’17 alum Brett Frazer competed in this race. He convinced her to try gravel bike racing a few years ago, and at the Traka, she was the 15th woman to finish. © The Traka — Mario Cobler