Gravel Grinder History: The Bikes

T.I.v1 2005 - Image courtesy of Joe Partridge

Since the Karate Monkey has been built up in an early style for gravel biking, I thought I might review some of the things which by now may have been forgotten - or not known by some of you, the readers of this blog - about the early days of gravel events in the Modern Era of gravel riding. 

Gravel events centered around long-distance cycling challenges kicked off in a much more influential and important way in 2005 with the running of the first Trans Iowa. By 2008, the genre was starting to be defined more clearly and crisply, and several things about this early time in gravel riding are noteworthy. There were a lot of things that were very different than they are in 2025, now nearly twenty years down the road. 

Bicycles are very different, overall, from what they were two decades ago, and many of you readers perhaps weren't even doing serious cycling twenty years ago. Hopefully this post will help put a lot of things into perspective.

Let's focus on the bicycles used back then and what technologies are missing from them which you might be taking for granted now. I'll be using my Karate Monkey as an example here, but I will also reference a few other bicycles in this discussion as well.

I switched out tires to more period correct WTB Vulpine v1's. Toobz, natch!

Of course, almost twenty years ago there were no "gravel bikes". There were no products in that category at all since it did not exist yet. Therefore; anything used by early gravel riders for riding in gravel events of the day were adapted from road bikes, mountain bikes, and cyclo - cross bikes. 

For the most part, gravel riders tended to gravitate toward mountain bikes first, and then as bicycles like the Surly Cross Check became more readily available in the late 2000's, those cyclo - cross style bikes were seen more and more as "gravel bikes". 

What We Did Not Have: There were certain things that were not really an option for most gravel riders in the mid to late 2000's. Some of these missing things were handicaps and when gravel riders did get their hands on those technologies, gravel riding became much more rider friendly and fun. 

Probably the chief two things missing then were tubeless tires and tires specifically designed for gravel in anything wider than cyclo cross limited 33mm widths. Seeking for wider, gravel-friendly rubber was often met with frustration and compromises. For instance, performance tires - tires with folding beads, lightweight, high-performance casings, and gravel friendly tread designs - simply were not readily available unless you went to 29"er sized rubber, or downsized to 33mm which was where all your cyclo-cross tires were at. In between there were hybrid tires with wire beads, heavy, dead feeling touring tires, and the oddball city tire with cheaply made casings. (Note: Some may point out Bruce Gordon 'Rock & Road' tires as being a gravel tire available then. Yes - but they were rare as hen's teeth and nobody really knew about them. If you did, good on ya!)

2006 Dirty Kansa 200: MTB's were commonplace at this event for years.

None of the tires that were used, with the exception of conversions of standard folding tires and some 26"er tubeless ready tires, were tubeless back in those times. Tubeless technology for bicycles was in its infancy, so much of the time the bicycles used in this time period were using butyl rubber tubes. 

Braking technology was in flux for mountain bikes at this time, and sometimes you would see the 29"er with a disc brake set up. However, since this was new territory for many riders, if they used disc brakes they were most often the ubiquitous Avid BB7's which were often spec'ed on early disc brake 29"ers. It also bears mentioning that many riders distrusted hydraulic based disc brakes at the time due to the fears of failure in the field which would not be serviceable by the rider. More on why that was in a bit.

For the most part, riders were using cantilever brakes. Caliper brakes were not good due to clearance issues with debris and especially with mud, so this forced a lot of riders to choose a mountain bike over an older road bike that may have had proper tire clearances. Many riders were doing a fair share of road and MTB, so when it came to choosing a bike for this new 'gravel thing", it was the mountain bike that came out for the ride. Had disc brake road bikes existed in the mid-2000's this may have been a radically different evolutionary story.

Single speed drivetrains were not uncommon back in the early gravel days.

In terms of drive train choices many riders did not want to risk failure due to the nature of some of the early gravel challenges. These events were most often longer than 100 miles, and in the case of Trans Iowa, were as long as 300 miles or longer. Self-supported riding was held in high regard then, so you had to carry your spares or risk having to fall out of an event due to an irreparable mechanical failure.

Since fail-safes were a way to help ensure success. Many riders eschewed anything which was complicated and needed special tools to repair, or that was simply going to be a chance for a DNF. (Did Not Finish) Chances for muddy events, rain, or other possible damaging situations related to bushwhacking through grass and dirt roads led riders to fear several possibilities for drive train damage. This is why single speed bikes, along with mechanical disc brakes, were often choices made by early gravel event participants. Not to mention that these types of choices were often less expensive. 

Some Other Notables: Since the wide rim craze had yet to take hold of mountain, road, and other forms of cycling, narrow internal width rims were the norm. Carbon rims were in their infancy in the mid-2000's and carbon rims were jaw-dropping in terms of expense. Your early gravel racer was not about to spend north of two thousand dollars for a wheel set that would get sacrificed to the crushed rock monsters. 

So, typically you saw early 29"er rims or touring rims getting the nod for gravel duty back then. My particular example sports a set of Salsa Cycles Delgado Cross rims, a rim - as the name suggests - intended for cyclo cross usage. Again, a rim brake rim, which was also more commonplace in the mid-2000's gravel event scene. 

While this has something to do with an accessory item, its need was predicated by a standard of those early bikes. Water bottle mounts were almost always done in pairs on bicycles of that time, but with such long distances facing riders, a solution had to be found to get enough water onboard to make the distance to a checkpoint or resupply point. 

 Usually this was the job of a hydration pack, an accessory item which was immensely popular with mountain bikers of the day. Another way that this issue was tackled was by using early half sized or triangular sized frame bags and stuffing a 1 - 3 liter bladder inside from a hydration pack with the drink tube attached to the stem of the bicycle to make it accessible. Triathlete style bottle carriers mounted off the rear of a saddle were also seen then, but these often would eject bottles over rougher terrain, so they tended to be less than ideal.

I witnessed an early solution to carry water bottles back in 2005 that hinted at a future feature of many gravel bikes when I saw a rider who had used hose clamps to attach two water bottle cages to a steel, uni-crown fork, one cage on each fork blade. 

Not necessarily bicycle related, but definitely a sign of these times was the use of analog computer technology. Many of these events had cue sheet navigation with GPS files being so rare that it was impractical to expect that anyone could make that work in a bicycle event. So, you had to invent a way to carry cue sheets and make them easy to read. 

Of course after all of that, you had to be able to make sense of cue sheet navigation,which was a skill in and of itself. Going off-course at a gravel event was common place then due to how easy it was to miss a turn or miscalculate navigation information and mileages. 

There is more. Lighting, nutrition, and comfortable grips, handlebars, and saddles were all things folks suddenly had to figure out when they got involved in gravel events back then. Now days a lot of this is not even a concern, and riding an event is easier than ever with several things having all been sussed out years ago, or made easier by current technologies.

I'll be doing some "throw-back" style gravel riding this year to help illustrate some of the challenges we had back in those days.