Confused

This morning we went for a bike ride. Nothing out of the ordinary with that.

Someone tried to argue the toss on twitter about how hard it was raining and in the mean time we watched a video on the you tubes about a bike race called The Dirty Kanza. I thought The Dirty Kanza was a race on a remote Scottish island but it seems I got it mixed up with another one. Either way it forms the pinnacle (or close to the pinnacle) of gravel racing and looks an especially gruelling bike ride.

It just so happened that a day or so before I had also listened to The Cycling Podcast. I haven’t really listened to it before despite having ridden with the presenter of it a couple of times last summer. We’re recent convert to it as Life In The Peloton has switched over to it’s platform and, as regular listeners will know, we’re huge fans of Mitch Docker. I digress. Anyways on TCP they were discussing the UCI getting hold of gravel racing and making it a series. The pros and cons, the whys and the wherefores.

I got rid of my gravel bike at the start of the winter because frankly having a bike with disc brakes, giant tyres and a dropper post that stopped quickly and was semi easy to control was less fun than one without those things and didn’t.

So off we went. Into the mizzle. Cross bikes under our legs.

Where does cross become gravel and gravel become XC and is cross racing just gravel crits and can I go on an adventure ride without a handlebar bag and a plaid shirt? Why am I so confused? Am I confused? Does gravel exist in Belgium? When will the 3 Peaks be renamed a gravel ride or is that really a mountain bike race done on the wrong bike?

Why do I care?

I don’t really.

Lovely day for it.

Tom Pidcock.