Image courtesy of Yorit Kluitman
Day 1 – Party Pace at the LtD Gravelfest
“Cow shit……Cow shit……cow shit…..” When you’re riding with a group of Dutch gravel riders on their own trails, you tend to learn pretty quickly all the unique phrases and hand signals that they use to tell each other about upcoming hazards. However, despite being fortunate enough to have ridden all over the globe, I was a little surprised to hear the riders call out warnings for bovine excrement on a regular basis, particularly when I couldn’t see any evidence of it on the trail. Luckily all became clear when I asked for an explanation – it turned out they were shouting “Paaltje”, which in my brain sounded just like “cow shit”. At least it made it easy to remember.
It was day one of a big weekend of Dutch gravelling and that meant the LtD Gravelfest. Set up by former professional road racer Laurens ten Dam after he tried gravel racing in the USA and wanted to bring a version of it back to Europe, the event is billed as “your best day out on a bike. Ever”. The USP for the event is fantastic riding (obviously), but also great food and a family-friendly festival-esque atmosphere. Entrants get a goodie bag, GPX files of the morning and afternoon routes, well stocked feedstations on route, a free pre-ride coffee from Il Magistrale, a choice of BBQed veggie or meat burger at lunchtime and a free drink from the bar.
Image courtesy of Yorit Kluitman
And did we mention the slice of delicious fruit-filled pastry loveliness delivered straight into our hands as we crossed the finish line? I’m not sure why professional race teams don’t consider this as the ideal post-ride food, as it hit the spot for all the riders I was in a group with.
The one thing the organisers couldn’t sadly do much about was the weather. Heavy overnight rain had left the trails pretty soggy in places and it was cold/grey/drizzly for the early part of the morning. Not that unusual for northern Europe at the end of April and luckily the sandy nature of the trails selected for the event meant they held up pretty well. The route started with a few kms of well marshalled urban riding. Thankfully the 1000+ riders who had signed up for the event were allowed to depart whenever they liked and this helped spread everyone out. The fact the event was billed as a festival meant there were no timing chips or pressure to compete in a certain time and this helped give the event a relaxed, friendly feel. It didn’t necessarily mean the speeds were any lower, but it did mean a lot of the riders were happy to ride sociably, rather than trying to overtake at every possible occasion.
For anyone coming to the event from outside Holland (or even those coming from the north of the country), we were struck by two things – one, this part of Holland is hilly and two, it has some of the best gravel riding trails in Europe. The route designer had done an amazing job of linking together the vast network of farm tracks, dirt roads, woodland trails, urban cut-throughs and short sections of low-traffic paved roads. Every trail seemed to flow seamlessly into the next, with minimal (if any) obstructions (with the exception of the occasional mid-trail cowshit paaltje to keep you on your toes). The route was split into two parts – the morning loop was 85kms with 720m of elevation gain and a slightly gentler afternoon loop which was an additional 55kms and 333m of elevation gain.
It seemed like for many of the participants, the lure of the wood-fired hot tub, a bar and some decent music was too strong (or perhaps they were sensibly saving their legs for Day 2?) but the trails seemed noticeably quieter in the afternoon. The route planners had done another amazing job, but in the afternoon managed to shoehorn in a memorable stepped descent down to a motorway flyover and a stunning ribbon of rooty singletrack through some broadleaf woodland near the end of the ride. Both of these appealed to gravel riders with an MTB rather than road background and it sounded like there were equal squeaks of delight to groans of despair from the riders around us.
Image courtesy of Yorit Kluitman
The combination of fantastic route, super slick organisation and great food made the LtD Gravelfest a really memorable day out. All it needed to live up to the moniker of “best day out on a bike ever” was some warmer weather, but that’s not something we can really hold the organisers responsible for!
Day 2 – Race Pace at the UCI Gravelfondo Limburg
Early morning sunshine peeking in through your hotel room window is always a good way to start the day, particularly when it’s race day! Participants in the inaugural UCI Gravelfondo Limburg were potentially competing for a place at the Gravel World Championships, to be held in Italy at the end of 2023 and that fact alone felt like it dictated the atmosphere at the event. Depending on their age category, racers had to do either 78kms or 113kms with both distances being made up of a series of smaller and larger loops, repeated the requisite number of times to cover the distance.
Rather than the start-when-you-like ethos of Day 1, this was properly regulated racing and that meant the 1000+ riders who had signed up to take part were gridded in marked-off pens based on their age. At the very front of the race was the equivalent of the VIP area – a box reserved for 25 “Priority” riders, who had been selected by the organisers and who represented the very best of the women’s and men’s racers competing in the event. As with all the events in the 2023 UCI Gravel World Series, the event timing was based on “gun time” rather than “chip time”, which meant in theory the closer you were to the front at the start, the higher the chance of you finishing within the magic “top 25% of finishers in your age group” and therefore getting automatic entry into the World Championships. Riders started filling up the start pens more than an hour before the gun was due to go off and the mixture of adrenaline, nerves and warm-up balm pervaded the air along the start straight.
At precisely 9.30 the starting gun was fired and all hell broke loose! The pent-up nerves and desire to qualify for the worlds saw incredible starting speeds from the front of the pack, but also some serious crashes. Desperation to get to the front combined with nervous energy was always going to be a potent combination and a number of elite level riders (including one of the pre-race favourites Sep Vanmarcke) saw their hopes vanish after either crashing themselves or being caught up in the effect of someone else’s incident.
The course was pretty varied in nature and started with a paved road climb up the infamous Cauberg, but included screamingly fast gravel tracks, some steep and quite rutted farm track descents, sections of smooth singletrack along the edge of fields and even a few sections of rooty/rocky/narrow/rough MTB tracks. The speeds attained by the elite racers were incredible, with 60kph+ plus recorded on some of the descents and "full-gas" sprints out of every corner.
Further back in the field, among the mere mortals (rather than the gods of gravel racing) the impression of the event seemed mixed. We heard some of the racers say it was too aggressive, with riders taking insane risks that often didn’t pay off and ended up causing crashes. There were plenty of casualties from the course too, with the sharp rocks and high speeds combining to inflict pinch punctures on the unlucky or the imprudent.
At the finish line, the air was tinged with happiness for surviving, fatigue from the effort and bittersweet from riders who either just made the top 25% or were just outside the cut-off.
The roots of gravel riding are incredibly diverse, with riders coming from road, CX, MTB or directly into the sport with no prior experience of cycling. This variation in background, experience and expectation is part of what makes gravel riding so fun and also why there is such a wide range of gravel events available to take part in. Whether you prefer Party Pace or Race Pace, you can find something to suit you. But if you’re looking for Team Gravel Union, we’ll probably be found in the pleasure-not-pain category!