Friday News And Views

 USAC Gravel Nationals Moves To Minnesota:

On Wednesday it was announced on USA Cycling's site that the USAC Gravel Nationals will be held in LaCrescent, Minnesota for 2025 and 2026. 

Quoted from the announcement:

“"We are excited to bring our Gravel National Championships to La Crescent/La Crosse for 2025-2026. The region’s diverse landscape offers multiple options for developing unique courses with challenging climbs, creating a new and different experience for riders out on the course. Combining our event with their renowned annual Apple Festival offers another unique experience that our riders and their families can enjoy off the course,” said Kyle Knott, USA Cycling’s Director of National Events."

Comments: Recently it was revealed that the Robidoux Rendezvous would be on "indefinite pause" and it is not understood at this time whether the USAC Gravel Nationals move was in response to this pause or if the pause was a reaction to USAC pulling out.  Reading the tea leaves I would guess it was the former. 

The Driftless Region of Southwestern Minnesota should provide some steep climbs and harrowing descents for those chasing a Stars and Stripes jersey. It will be interesting to see how USAC develops this event. 

The venue is straight across the Mississippi River from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, so there should be plenty of infrastructure and resources for putting the event on at a level USAC will expect. Heck, it is close enough to me that I might have to go and do some live reporting on it. We will see. 

Image courtesy of Canyon Bikes

Canyon Bikes Shows New Stingr CFR Helmet:

Canyon Bikes has a new helmet with an unusual retention system. The helmet, called the Stingr CFR, boasts watt-saving aerodynamics and great cooling as well for the wearer.

The retention system, which eschews the typical Nylon straps and buckles, is called the HighBar System. It uses two arms which articulate off the main chassis of the retention system near where the rider's ears would be. These arms are micro-adjustable with a dial at the chin area. 

Canyon claims this way of retention saves watts, is cooler, and causes less wind-generated noise by the rider's ears. The helmet also utilizes MIPS technology to help protect the rider in the event of a crash.

The helmet weighs 0.6lbs and costs $299.99 USD. 

Comments: A bold move, yet one wonders why helmet manufacturers have held on to the tried and true Nylon strap system all these years. Perhaps it "just works"? Maybe, but I credit Canyon's team for trying something different. 

My concern initially from looking at this would be how this retention system would work with small faces, wider faces, and other human anomalies that may not be compatible with a rigid arm take on helmet retention. I also would have to wonder how much noise really would be reduced by these arms versus straps. I'm thinking Iowa wind doesn't care. I could be wrong...

Podcast News & More:

The recent visit I made to see Ari Andonopoulous resulted in a podcast that I have gotten some good feedback from. Ari and I talked about gravel history, mostly as it pertained to how we did things back then. We also touched upon Trans Iowa a bit. Then we talked about how much things have changed, a bit about event production, and more. In case you missed this episode, you can find it HERE. 

My vision going forward  would be to try to find more participants in the early gravel scene, and specifically from Trans Iowa, but not necessarily from the event alone. I wanted to try to get as many takes on what that time was like to preserve those memories and have a place where those facts can live on. 

But if people don't find that to be an interesting thing to listen to, I may not pursue the idea. Or I might anyway in spite of that. Ari feels folks would dig it. And what about you? Would you find this to be an interesting thing to listen to, or have curated? Let me know in the comments. Or you can e-mail me at g.ted.productions@gmail.com. 

Image courtesy of BMC Bikes.

BMC Overhauls URS Gravel Range:

BMC announced on Thursday that they had revamped the entire URS gravel bike range. The top-line URS Two has an interesting take on geometry. By the way, there is an URS One. That is the frame with the "Micro-Travel" rear end, a feature BMC have had for a few years now. 

Comments: Here we have a great example of a gravel bike being made to appeal to mountain bikers. While I feel elements of MTB geometry are interesting in gravel bikes, (slack head tube, lower bottom bracket, longer top tubes), there is one element I do not think is a good thing in a gravel bike at all. Keeping in mind that a gravel bike is really an "All-Roads" bike, not a mountain bike with drop bars. 

What I don't like is the steep seat tube angles being borrowed from MTB. This doesn't really make a road bike "better". Well, unless you use a dropper post and are scrambling up short, steep climbs on dirt. But again, a gravel bike and a drop bar MTB are two very different things, and they should be. 

Added to that is the limited (47mm in this case) tire clearance and the URS Two becomes an oddball bike. It can neither be a true MTB, (not enough tire clearance), or a good gravel riding bike, (too steep a seat tube angle). I'm sure it is okay, but at the prices people pay for such bikes, you should be getting a bike that is dialed in for one or the other thing. Not an "underbike" that is trying to be something via its geometry that it cannot truly do well. 

That's my take.

Image courtesy of Trek Bikes

Trek Announces New Checkpoint v3 and Checkmate SLR:

Trek announced the version 3 of their venerable Checkpoint bike Thursday alongside a new racing gravel bike called the Checkmate SLR. 

The new Checkpoint features all kinds of accessory mounts, tire clearance for up to 50mm tires, and the ISO rear end compliance design. 

The new Checkmate SLR differes in that it isn't as fully featured in terms of accessory mounts, and it has a narrower maximum tire clearance of 45mm. Most notably this bike features a 4mm deeper bottom bracket drop at 80mm than the Checkpoint does.

The Checkmate SLR (Image courtesy of Trek Bikes.

Trek also tightened up the rear chain stay length and steepened the seat tube angle by about one degree over the Checkpoint v3. 

Comments: Here I see a more road-focused design, which makes sense since unpaved roads are still roads, not MTB trails. I like Trek's take on things, for the most part, but I would rather see a slacker, by one degree, head tube angle and the rear end of the Checkpoint v3 on the SLR with the SLR's lower BB. 

And the frame set is 4K? Ouch! Unbelievable. I'll get a custom frame for that price, thank you very much! (In fact, I could easily buy two steel custom frames for that much!) But I am sure that Trek will sell many of these bikes since a lot of people will think that this is what they have to have to be "competitive", or something!

Thanks for reading Guitar Ted Productions! Get out there and ride those bicycles people!