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| This and three other designs coming soon.... |
I found out yesterday that my partner in Riding Gravel, Ben Welnak, has come up with four new stickers that should be available sometime soon. When I know more I will pass it along here.
There will be "Addicted To Gravel" stickers in this run, in case you were wondering. Stay tuned.....
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| News on next year's Grinder Nats has come out... |
The Gravelleur's Raid event has been an annual event for a while now and when Grinder Nationals announced that they were going to have an event in the same area, but later in June, it sent out a red flag to the organizers. To their credit, instead of fighting with each other these events have now joined forces and Grinder Nationals will now happen in conjunction with Gravelleur's Raid on April 7th, 2018.
Here's the Press release:
PRESS RELEASE: Alright gravel peeps here we go.
The Gravelleur's Raid 100 mile gravel road race will now be your gravel Grinder Nationals event. It will be a fully supported gravel event.
It is owned and operated by the United States Endurance Cycling Federation. http://www.usecf.com/
We will be growing the event and making it one of the top gravel races in the United States.
More info to come.
The 50 mile non-competitive event will be called Gravelleur's Raid and become a bigger and better event also.
There ya go......
Commentary: There will be a lot of folks that want to piss and moan about how "gravel racing is being ruined", or by expressing some similar comments. I have talked with one of the USECF head honches, Troy, worked alongside of him, and have interviewed him. He gets it. The USECF grew up out of a grassroots background. The USECF wants to keep the vibe that gravel racing has always had, but they want to also have an opportunity for its best racers to gain recognition and be rewraded with a jersey that shows that. As far as I know, that's all they want to do.
Like I have said, I've spoken with Troy from the USECF. Have any of the other commenters dug into this and asked folks from the organization what's up? Or are we just shooting from the hip? Uh huh.......
I will pass along this: The USECF jumped at the chance to do a "Gravel Nationals" because they knew that the USAC Federation was going to try to do it. I doubt that USAC would be interested in doing things in a "grassroots way" judging by how they have operated throughout their history. So, there is that nugget to chew on as well.
Finally, I feel that the Grinder Nationals is not doing anything now, or will do anything in the future that say, an event like Dirty Kanza has not already done before. That's likely what the organizers are shooting for here. So, the DK200 draws well over 2000 racers and supporting folks to Emporia every June. If that is the Grinder Nats template, I don't see how that "ruins" gravel racing, or the scene. I guess if it rankles your feathers, you could always just not bother with it, ya know....... We do have a choice.
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| 2018 Trek Roscoe 8- A 27.5+ rig (Image courtesy of Trek Bicycles) |
Remember the old Fisher Roscoe? Well, Trek has dredged up another old Fisher Bikes model name and tacked it on to this new, 27.5+ wheeled hard tail. You can think of it as a smaller wheeled Stache.
There will be two models offered to start with. The Roscoe 7 will retail for right at a grand and the Roscoe 8 will basically be $1200.00 list. The Orange Roscoe 8 has an aluminum frame with internal rear derailleur and dropper post routing, an NX 1X 11 group, and comes with a dropper. It also has a 141mm, open drop out rear end that is like a Boost hub but with a quick release. The fork has 120mm travel, by the way, and the bike is surprisingly shown with Schwalbe tires.I imagine at some point Bontrager will have 27.5+ rubber for these bikes.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward because the X Cal series, also redesigned for 2018, is in this same price point. Trek will certainly be eyeballing which line does better and I wouldn't be surprised to see one or the other go away in the future. But then again, this is Trek and they manufacture a boat load of models.
I like the Roscoe 8. It seems like a better spec than a Timberjack and you'll likely be able to actually find one to test ride. I am a little leery of the rear axle spacing, which seems out of step with the current "axle du jour" standards. But otherwise it seems like a decent entry to plus bikes from a good name brand company.
Okay, that's it for this week. Have a great weekend and stay cool!
The Roscoe looks interesting, but the rear axle is baffling to me...why not go with a more standard....er, standard?
ReplyDelete@Rob- Yeah, the only downer I could think of about that bike at that price was the rear drop out. I suspect that it is easier to space a hub axle and weld on a traditional QR drop out than it is to spec a through axle rear hub and try to weld on threaded drop outs which requires more precision and more machining. A 148 Boost rear end would have been great, but perhaps more expensive than Trek wanted this bike to be?
ReplyDeleteUSECF membership required next and blacklisting for riders in unapproved events not far behind.
ReplyDeleteGravelluer's Raid was a great event, I hope that it doesn't change too much now that it's combining forces with the Grinder Nationals. I'll also be curious to see what happens with the Cool Hand Luke race that was kind of a "sister race" two weeks after the Gravelluers. The April time should be good for the Nationals though, by June the races seem to start stacking up and there are multiple races every weekend it seems.
ReplyDelete