Early in the week the Iowa Gravel Series, headed up by Chris McQueen, announced their slate of events for the 2024 season. Headlining the series is a new, all-female event and two new additional races with one of them serving as the finale to the series.
The IGS is partnering with Prairie Bloom, the largest cycling club in Omaha, NE, to put on what they hope will eventually be one of the largest women's only gravel events in the nation. Called the "Prairie Superbloom", it will run on the same course that is used for Glenwood Gravel. The event will take place in September of 2024.
The series is also adding two new events in the Kalona Horseshoe and the Fairfield Harvest Rush. The Fairfield event will close out the IGS events for 2024 and so the IGS is hoping to offer a prize purse for both the over-all series and the event that day. Sponsors and details are TBD, but stay tuned to the IGS site (link above) for announcements or follow the Iowa Gravel Series on social media.
Comments: Back in 2020 when I saw the way that Chris McQueen was doing things, I knew that he was going to bring in a very different, aggressive approach to gravel events in Iowa. The state was ripe for the taking, in a way, since the gravel racing/riding scene, well established by the late twenty-teens, had not been pursued by any promotional teams or developed by an organization despite the vast opportunities Iowa has to offer. Besides the new-ish series of events put on by Relentless Events, which are all ultra-distance in nature, the state did not have a cohesive series of "standard" distance events until the IGS started up.
The announcements for the 2024 season are typically aggressive and forward-thinking in terms of what we have had for gravel events in Iowa in the past. Are the events that the IGS puts on "too fancy"? Some may be put off by the progressive, more promotionally driven messaging that the IGS has, but again- Iowa was a wasteland in terms of any "big-time" gravel events, if that makes any sense. Iowa had nothing like the SBT GRVL, Unbound, Big Sugar, Gravel Worlds type of thing going on, and really, I find that rather bizarre. Why not? This state has been, for all intents and purposes, passed by in the bigger gravelly world of cycling when it should not have been so. (And I realize I may have had something to do with that fact.)
Maybe the Iowa Gravel Series will change that. We'll see.....
Raputitsa Celebrates 10th Edition Of The Event In 2024:
The Raputitsa, a mixed terrain, "gravel" event in Vermont, is setting up to celebrate 10 years of the event's running in 2024. To mark the occasion, the event directors have chosen to feature several sections of the original Raputitsa course and have decided to "up the adventure quotient" by moving the date earlier to potentially capture more "challenging weather".
Known to have muddy, sometimes snowy sectors on the course, Raputitsa says that by moving their date forward by a week they hope to catch a bit more of that sort of thing. They are quoted in their press release as stating, "Mother Nature is going to test your mettle, and we're here for it!"
Registration and lodging for the 2024 Raputitsa opens up November 1st.
Comments: You know, it's kind of ironic when you stop to think about this dynamic of having very challenging conditions for an event. There have been cries of "foul" where challenging, muddy conditions have occurred during certain, very high profile gravel events. Event RD's have been taken to task for "putting riders through terrible conditions" just to hold an event, or use a particular course.
Then there are those who think the event may not have been a genuine one if the course is super-dry and there is no wind. They feel "cheated" out of a "real experience". One that they trained for and expected the trials and tribulations of the event to be a part of their personal, prideful "success story" afterward. However; if things were too easy, that kind of short-circuits the possibilities for "epic story telling" after the fact.
So, there is no winning that debate when it comes to Race directing and promoting. All you can do is cast the net as far as you can in terms of getting the information about course conditions and possibilities to as many as you can. Maybe you will get racers/riders informed. The rest is on the rider to decide. Don't like the course conditions? Well, no one is forcing you to ride in any particular conditions.You can go ahead and stop at any point. As for your event fees, well, you should know the "refund policies" ahead of your attendance. I'm going to guess most events don't have refund policies, and if they do, usually they allow a deferral to the following year's event.
For those who didn't get all the mud, snow, wind, or whatever they were expecting? There is always next year, or another event.
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| Image courtesy of Lauf Cycles |
Lauf Debuts Uthald Road Bike:
Lauf, the gravel bike company known for their carbon linkage fork, the Grit, has now made a road bike. Well..... Not your typical road bike.
Lauf claims that they rode at least one test mule with a variable head tube angle across multiple terrains and with several riders and arrived at a bike with a slightly slacker head tube angle and with less offset than you might think you'd want with that head angle.
They also added copious, (for a road bike, that is), tire clearance with a recommended maximum size of 35mm, but I've already seen where someone has fitted in a 38mm tire.
The Uthald has a short rear-center and so the wheel base is kept somewhat in check. The bottom bracket drop isn't crazy, but it is 73mm, and that's okay. The thing here is all about the higher than expected trail figure and slack-ish head tube angle. For a road bike, that is. But then, I'm seeing this as another move back toward where things once were in the early 20th Century.
It's also wireless only. Yep! Something I think we'll be seeing more of in the future as companies push the electronically shifted drive trains more and more. It's probably not a bike I would choose to ride here in Iowa, (I don't have any desire to ride pavement), but it is an interesting development in road bike offerings. Definitely NOT your average road bike.
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| Merida Silex 4000 (Image courtesy of Merida) |
The World Champion's Gravel Bike:
Merida Bikes released their newest version of their Silex range of gravel bikes on Thursday. This brand is not sold in the USA, but I thought the bike, and its unique design, was noteworthy.
As the headline states, this was the bike that was under Matej Mohorič when he won the Men's UCI Gravel World Championships recently. That becomes an important note when we look at the Silex's geometry.
This is the other noteworthy bit, that being that Merida took cues from their mountain bike range when designing the newest Silex range. The old Silex had an already slack-ish 71° head tube angle, but this new one goes under 70° to a 69.5° head tube angle. The bottom bracket drop is a healthy 75mm, and the chain stays are not super-short, but with a maximum 45mm tire capability, 430mm is about as short as you'd want to go, I think.
The mountain biking influence on gravel bikes is being seen more and more, and on the other end, we are seeing bikes like the Lauf (above) creep up on "gravel bike" territory. In fact, Merida has its own "Endurance Road" bike that can handle up to a 35mm tire.
This begs some questions: "When do "road bikes" become "gravel bikes"? Also, "When do 'Gravel bikes' become MTB/XC bikes with drop bars?" Does any of that matter? Apparently it doesn't too much to a two-time Tour de France winner who just won a single day UCI gravel race. (With a lot of paved sections, I might add.)
Tomorrow I will take a closer look at the blurring of lines in terms of gravel bikes.
That's it for today! Thanks for reading Guitar Ted Productions!
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