The 5 steps of gravel preparedness

Trek Driftless mechanic Tom Price estimates that the program has brought enough spare parts to Steamboat Springs to build bikes for four riders, three times over. 

Do the math. Triple and then quadruple the handlebars, saddles, group sets, wheel bearings, stems, and more. That’s thousands of parts, organized in a moveable service course, all in the name of near endless customization at the meanest races in the world.

Events like SBT GRVL are designed to put riders through physical hell, but they stress their wrenches nearly as much. Making sure the equipment is ready to face 100-plus miles of rocks and dust and ruts and mud is one thing, but Price and his fellow Driftless mechanic James Sullivan also play a pivotal role helping riders dial in the best possible setups.

Gravel racing is so damn hard: Inside SBT GRVL race week with Trek Driftless

Throughout the week leading up to SBT, Price and Sullivan worked almost non-stop to make sure the Driftless crew of Russell Finsterwald, Haley Hunter Smith, Torbjorn “Toby” André Røed, and Paige Onweller were the most well-prepared riders in the world. Here’s how they did it, in 5 not-so-simple steps.

When bikes are schlepped across great distances — all over the continent, and sometimes overseas — where and tear is natural. But it can also be dangerous for the rider, especially under the stress that pros can inflict upon equipment. 

When they arrived in Steamboat Springs on the Monday before the race, Price and Sullivan began their work by inspecting the riders’ contact points on their bikes — the bars, stems, levers, saddles — and making sure they were torqued to spec. If they haven’t seen the equipment in a while, they’ll inspect the parts that can wear down under training — bottom brackets, wheel bearings, headset bearings — and replace them if needed.

On rare occasions, bikes suffer structural damage in transit. For one rider, their bike showed up to Steamboat with broken headset spacers and crimped brake lines. To make sure the bike was safe, Price stripped the bike down to a bare frame and rebuilt it with brand new parts and rerouted the brake lines.

The “shop” is the garage at the rental condo where the men’s riders and staff are staying in Steamboat Springs. “Because our Service Course is generally in our van, we pretty much carry everything we have,” Price says. The makeshift workspace is ground zero for the weekend. After the bikes are made ride-ready, the fun begins as the riders return to the garage again and again for tweaks and changes ahead of race day.

The riders’ setups will change throughout the week as they do training rides on the course. They weren’t able to lean on their prior experience as much this year. SBT changed the route, so that the 125-mile Black course featured early climbs that would thin the mass start of riders much more quickly than in the past.

As riders returned to the garage in the early afternoons throughout race week, they relayed their thoughts to Price and Sullivan. Do they need lighter or sturdier wheels? How big a tire? How knobby? What drivetrain, the lightweight and efficient new SRAM RED XLPR AXS, or the wider gear range of SRAM Eagle Transmission?

As soon as they can, Sullivan and Price get to work adjusting the bikes for the next day’s rides. They built up 10 spare wheelsets in addition to the four already on the riders’ bikes, all with varying tire setups and wheel depths based on potential race conditions and what riders have preferred throughout the season. From the early afternoon until dinner time around 7 p.m., the mechanics are in the garage, power washing, fixing problems, swapping parts, and organizing their space. 

Some days are longer than others. When possible, between getting organized for the day in the morning and waiting for riders to return in the afternoon, Price and Sullivan will sneak out for rides of their own. “That’s really good physical and mental health for us to actually get out and see some of the course,” Price says. “But then once the riders come back, it’s washing bikes, and they’ll tell us anything that they want to change and we go from there.”

The work cycle repeats every day, and as of the Friday before Sunday’s start, riders were still making requests based on what they experienced on different portions of the course. 

Fortunately for everyone’s sanity, the dry weather persisted throughout the week in Steamboat Springs, including on race day, making the decision and testing process much easier on everyone. At SBT, the riders knew what the we’re getting: A fast-rolling, hilly, and occasionally technical course in clear conditions. 

But even if there’s nothing to address immediately on the riders’ bikes, there’s always work to be done. When they could, Price and Sullivan worked ahead, preparing mountain bike forks for the Chequamegon 40, the next race on the Life Time Grand Prix coming up on Sept. 14.

“We could do Chequamegon right from here,” Price says.

According to Sullivan, “the only consistency is inconsistency” when it comes to the race day rules at gravel events. SBT GRVL, in a particularly mean wrinkle, bars riders from receiving race day support outside of the event-run aid stations. That means that Trek Driftless staff will not be able to help riders along the course, either by handing out bottles and food, or by providing maintenance.

Prior to Unbound Gravel in June, the day before the race was the busiest of the week. Sullivan and Price, along with Driftless support manager RC Anderson, prepped the Trek vans with spare parts, power washers, and rider-specific nutrition needs to meet the athletes at strategic points on the course. They even ran mock feed stops with the riders, ultimately dialing in power washing bikes and feeding the riders to under 40 seconds. 

“We did a couple runs where the riders pretended to roll into the aid station, where tables with water bottles and their gels and everything would be positioned, and I would grab the bike and wash it,” Sullivan says. “Everyone is familiar with their role.”

On the eve of SBT GRVL, there was much less to do. Price and Sullivan made sure the riders’ Checkmates were race ready, then got a good night’s sleep before an early rise. On Sunday morning, they were up at 4 a.m., well ahead of the 6:15 a.m. mass start, to reserve spots for the riders as close to the starting line as possible. The riders arrived around 5:45 a.m. to warm up on rollers, and then a half hour later they were off, almost entirely self-supported on a roughly 6-7 hour journey.

At that point, there was nothing that staff could do for the riders until their return.

As the riders compete, Driftless staff pack up their living arrangements and equipment. Price and Sullivan wash and pack the bikes when the riders return, and the team has dinner together one last time before departing on Monday. The process of rigorous inspection, iteration, and preparation begins again when the crew gets back together for the next big race. 

The unique arrangements of gravel racing make it all possible. Riders and staff spend most of their time under the same roof, in the same shared living spaces, in constant conversation. Gravel may beat all other disciplines of cycling in terms of the sheer number of solutions to the obstacles it presents. (See: Wild rigs like Finsterwald’s drop bar Supercaliber that he rode to a sixth place finish in Leadville.) And through strong communication, Price and Sullivan help riders find exactly what they need to compete to the best of their abilities. 

There’s no such thing as a perfect gravel setup. Riders have an incredible array of tools at their disposal, each with benefits and trade-offs. And because gravel racing never sits still — with riders facing new and greater challenges every year, and technology evolving rapidly — the chatter never stops, and the work is never truly done. Price and Sullivan know that better than anyone, sitting front row to one of most maddening and exhilarating sports on Earth.