I wrote my first article for TREAD Media about my desire to try my hand at gravel racing before I had actually ridden a gravel bike. The idea of gravel racing had appealed to me from the first time that I encountered it online a few years ago and I had made educated assumptions about what it would potentially be like for me, based on what I know about my physiology, offroad technical ability (or lack thereof) cycling and dirt roads in general. In reality, it’s been quite different!
By Donovan van Gelder
I received my first TREAD Media test bike, the Cannondale Topstone, on the 13th of July and did my first ride incorporating ‘groads’ the following day. So, it has been approximately five weeks of gravel riding at the time of writing this follow up article. In that time I have covered 847km in about 38 hours on the bike and taken part in two events. In order to give an accurate idea of where I am fitness-wise I feel I should add that I rode 2242km in 74.5 hours in those five weeks. A lot of this on Zwift and some on the tar on either my rode or TT bike. I was also in pretty good shape before taking delivery of the Topstone. So, distance-wise about a third of my riding was on the gravel bike although quite a bit of that was on tar roads that link my local gravel. Interesting to me was that time-wise, I spent about half on the gravel bike.
The big question that we asked in my first article was, “would gravel lean more towards road or more towards mountain biking?”
Before we answer that though I need to differentiate between my experiences of training and racing on gravel. My local dirt roads are exactly that, dirt. I am no geologist but I do know that the hills of the aptly named, Valley of a Thousand Hills, have an overlying layer of sandstone, so the unpaved roads are mostly dirt. Compacted sand with some rutting caused by erosion and, in winter, often covered by a finer, looser layer of small pebbles and fine gravel. This area has good infrastructure and the roads are well used and as a result, well maintained.
I really enjoyed myself riding on these. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the bike as we will cover that in a proper bike review but, it is very responsive, and performs in similar ways to my carbon road bikes. Riding these fast dirt roads was a pleasure and I have had a lot of fun connecting well-travelled tar roads with dirt options that weren’t open to me on my skinny tyres. I have ridden bicycles in this area for 38 years and it was fantastic to plan new routes after all that time.
I am still very cautious on loose corners and over ruts and dongas as I am not sure what the gravel bike and especially the 45mm wide tyres can do for me. I have gone nowhere near the limits of what the bike is capable of. I am very much riding as if I am on a road bike on dirt roads. Trying to do everything for the bike instead of relying on it being able to handle things that the road bike would not. I have even enjoyed the bike on the tar. I am slower than I would be on my road bikes but the ability to ride on the verge or over patched and rough surfaces comfortably is an advantage. There are even some instances where I have ridden on the pavement so as not to aggravate motorists. Something I wouldn’t do on the road bike.
The racing – The two races that I have done so far have had completely different surface conditions to the roads that I train on. In Underberg and Karkloof, the roads are much rockier and more loose. My technical ability on surfaces like that is still severely limited and I would have been happier on a bike with a more relaxed geometry and even a front shock. I realised in Underberg that I had pumped the tyres too hard (old habits die hard) and corrected that error two weeks later in Karkloof but I was still very slow and cautious on the steep descents over loose rock and stone.
I finished the Underberg Gran Fondo and enjoyed the satisfaction of that achievement without enjoying the whole experience. There were times when I was out of my depth on descents and was scared of crashing and injuring myself. I don’t like feeling like that. There were also long stretches of the ride where I was completely on my own and actually unsure if I had taken a wrong turn. Not something I am used to on the road.
Two weeks later, at the Go Gravel Midlands event in Karkloof I found myself taken way too far out of my comfort zone. The combination of an aggressive gravel bike and my extreme shortcomings in offroad technical ability meant that some of the loose, rocky descents were almost unrideable for me. Not withstanding the fact that my ego makes it very difficult to come to terms with getting left for dead by my competitors, I was also scared that I was going to have a very serious unplanned dismount and do myself some grievous bodily harm. So I mentally checked out of the race at a very early stage and called it a day at halfway when we went past the start/finish.
So, to the question – From my perspective and coming from my background, I felt like the first two races that I have done have leaned far more towards MTB than road. Road racing fitness and skills were superfluous, if you didn’t have the MTB skills to maintain momentum, or simply stay on your bike over loose, rocky sections of the course. My expectation of gravel racing, before ever swinging a leg over a gravel bike was that it would consist of relatively smooth dirt roads, where traction, duration and gradients would be the biggest challenges. Was I wrong or are there events like that? I think so.
I am not disappointed though and, even though we have had a rocky start, I am sticking with gravel and will keep working on the skills. I will just be a bit more discerning of the routes and surfaces of races that I consider in the future. Two of the things that I was looking for in gravel have been realised. I do like riding the bike and training on dirt roads and the desire to incorporate family getaways around events in beautiful places was certainly achieved. My wife, daughter and I had wonderful weekend getaways at both events. They won’t be as happy if I end up on my head in ditch though so, as I said, there is work and research to be done…