Gravel – A Love Letter

‘Gravel – A Love Letter’ is a documentary film that captures the essence of gravel cycling by sharing what it means to riders, including three PEARL iZUMi athletes, Hannah Shell, Marley Blonsky and Angela Naeth. The film explores the origins of gravel racing and the impact it has on the communities and people’s lives it touches.

What is gravel yeah community Uh thank you uh grovel is like a second family to me i’m in another dimension right now five years ago i had no idea what a gravel bike was way more fun than my first one my average mile per hour was like 12 miles an hour today

Freedom just being out and about well deserved thank you yes best part of ourselves So the the origins of the pcl you know really just a few roadies were just thinking about like having to have a race license in order to to race an event so i said hey what if we uh what if we created something where it’s more of a club

Where anyone participate you don’t have to have a race license you can just show up and do events you know and that’s where uh craig schmidt uh lincoln knight and troy krauss another lincoln knight they decided on this club called the pirate cycling league and then we started organizing events i

Was brought on to help organize events we created a blog you know and after the blog we start posting you know some rides and people start showing up now first used to be just a handful of people showing up and we were doing crits and like some point-to-point gravel races

And then after a while you know end up being like oh wow there’s like you know 50 people showing up for a pc element so it just took off and i think people really like that you know you didn’t have to sign up in advance you can just

Show up and be there you know me being a pcl member and kind of a founder i created the grapple worlds event at the end of the day we’re all here in this together some of us come to race some of us come to ride but we all share

The same road that’s the spirit of gravel that’s what gravel’s all about we are one minute i’m a little tired with jack because i want to start lying that i’m always nervous yeah i think i’m just you know excited to get out there and like i’ve only seen

A little bit of the course so it feels like a lot of it’s gonna be kind of an adventure today four three two one let’s go gravel worlds 2021 sponsored by laos has begun i can’t wait to see each and every one of you back here cycling has had a

Tendency that as something gets bigger it becomes less inclusive and so i kind of feel this duty that that’s not at all what gravel is and that’s why gravel is what it is is because there’s there aren’t these rules and there aren’t these um barriers for you to be able to do that

To get into gravel cycling and that’s what that’s what i loved about gravel cycling that’s what got me hooked right away uh so that’s i feel like this duty as a promoter of gravel worlds and a face in gravel that i have to make sure that it stays inclusive that

It doesn’t become harder for people to get into kansas city gravel is uh it’s so majira but it’s fun i encourage all our filipino american friends right out there once in your life try it out man it’s good for you there’s something about just being in the middle of nowhere

Being totally self-supported whether that’s on a 50-mile ride 100 200 this weekend and just being really uh self-sufficient i think we all need a little bit more of that sometimes so yeah gravel is about camaraderie about a festive situation about pushing yourself about taking some risks maybe falling down i

Think that shared experience is the magic it’s it’s the fact that everybody’s going out on the same course their experience it in similar ways and then getting to retell those stories to each other and and that that brings everybody together and there’s i mean thousands of people here

At this event so that’s a lot of people coming together yeah i went to college as a track athlete and then finished college and graduated and i still wanted to be active so i found out about triathlon just by watching tv and seeing it in a magazine so there was one near

My hometown and i decided to jump into it it was a pool swim it was actually kind of a gravel ride and um a gravel run basically and and i ended up winning that event so i was hooked instantly um and then since then i’ve competed

Kind of all over the world and country and i moved to the states to really follow my passion and i’ve made a career out of it well triathlon comes in a variety of different ways i do the longer distances so i do the ironman distances and half

Ironman which is a 2.4 mile swim 112 mile bike and a marathon at the end so i started going into gravel because of the ability to kind of see new adventures as a triathlete a lot of us get stuck into zones and power and just

Time trialling on the bike and i as a kid have always loved the outside when i got my gravel bike the first thing i felt was me as a five-year-old girl and just loving the bike like that’s that’s how i could explain it i got my phone out i

I took a picture of myself and video and said oh my gosh i feel like a kid again just because you can take this bike anywhere whereas me always being on a tt bike you always just had to be on the roads and the roads have to be pristine

And with a gravel bike you can literally again just go anywhere and the gravel races that i’ve done i’ve never pushed myself this hard you know 150 mile race takes about eight hours and so that can transfer over to ironman just because of the aerobic-ness of it [Applause] some of the biggest um Road racing events in europe are sort of like gravel events in the paris roubaix from paris to roubaix over course always changes but over like 20 sections of cobblestones and and then you have the tour flanders which which also has old quermont and uh and a number of

Uh the camelberg a number of important cobblestone climbs and that’s really what makes the race is the is the sort of gravel type racing part of it but but that’s completely separate from what everybody else gets to do so the day before you can do the sportif event the

Perry ruby sportif or the or the tour flanders sportif and you can do it with a million people or thousands of people and and and enjoy the day and have feed zones and and uh have the camaraderie but then the actual event you have to be off the course you get to

Be a spectator and they’ll flash by and that’s it right now gravel racing in the united states you’re on the course at the same time starting at the same time as those elite riders and some of those elite riders in the in those gravel events used to be pro tour riders who would

Ride the elite perry roubaix and and tour flanders and all that and now they’re riding gravel but you get you get to be with them [Applause] Current american gravel racing is very similar to the original tour de france uh and and and i suppose if you had a three week long gravel race where point to point to point to point to point it would be almost identical to the tour de france that that the that the bikes

Have to take a certain amount of abuse because the roads are crappy and that you have to do your own service there was a guy who broke a fork coming down off the tourmale one year and and he broke his fork off and then he went to a farmer’s

You know into a farmer’s yard and got the got the farmer to help him set up a forge that he could that he could then weld his fork back together which he did but since he had the farmer’s daughter squeezing the bellows they dequeued him because he was getting mechanical

Assistance so that’s how rigid it was against against accepting any mechanical assistance it’s back to the back to the original heart of cycling just ride you know ride all day long on whatever roads are along and be able to fix your stuff when things go wrong and what is gravel um

Gravel to me is exploring new places getting off the beaten path connecting the dots between places and people and uh just getting out there yeah so like my journey with cycling started out as an urban cyclist commuting to and from work so gravel cycling for me has really

Opened up a whole new world it’s gotten me out of the city i live in seattle so i’m used to like stop light to stop light and traffic and gravel to me is like country roads and big vistas and it’s just amazingly peaceful and beautiful and i can ride uninterrupted

For hours at a time which you can’t do in the city um so it’s even brought like endurance and fitness in a way that city riding hasn’t and so longer miles too and bigger challenges and elevation What is gravel It’s so many things and for one it’s it’s an amazing crossroads of several different rider groups uh that are coming together and maybe even solo out there riding these roads that seem like they might be really remote they might be the the next frontier of outside of

Your little town wherever that might be or big city but it’s just this exciting uh discipline or movement of riding that kind of has no boundaries I think that’s really makes it special because it’s it really opens the door for a lot of interpretation of what that is to an individual or a group of people there are no constraints we can turn down that road and it could be quite a bit rougher than the one we just

Came off of but that’s okay and the sense of adventure of like yeah what is around that next corner i think it really goes well with what is what is grava let’s go find out i think gravel is very testing on spiritual limits um because so much of it is

Going to a really deep dark place in your mind and not surrendering to it i have raced bikes for five years maybe six years um i started out racing predominantly criteriums solely on the road criterium racing is really it’s this really fast dynamic form of racing

It’s similar to kind of nascar on bikes and so it’s often a closed loop in a downtown city center and importantly criteriums are not a straight course they’re known for having several tight corners sharp up hills fast downhills it’s a dangerous form of racing and that danger makes it really exciting

After my first year of racing i was picked up to papa john’s presented by trek raced there for a year and then raced on dna for a year um and after that was kind of had lost the love that i had for road racing and started to look for something

Different and that led me to gravel [Applause] So in contrast to criterium racing gravel racing is It’s more about the experience of the race and that experience is defined by the rider so you might have a rider who’s coming and has never done a competitive event before and so for them getting to the finish line before the time cut and before the

Finish line is torn down is their win but in gravel i do feel that there’s more of a glory in just finishing the race there’s a glory in even signing up for the race and attempting the training for it it’s hard That’s about I like it way better that you tell me that you kill it it’s hot out there it’s chunky it feels slow ah ice feels good oh man is your bike running well i hit a couple things hard but it can i just stay here so how many miles is the next one

I don’t know i can’t see my face but hit pretty hard gotta see if i’m concussed and then we’ll see if i go Thank you i’m just gonna lay down for a minute old guy falls down Are you really okay sorry oh yeah thanks a lot you’re good there do you want anything on your knees that’s the worst part thank you all right see you guys thank you good appreciate it good job To me and to moots in general and i think kind of the cycling industry the the interesting thing about this is the gravel has brought awareness to some of these small towns that you would otherwise not visit more than likely um you know whether that’s emporia kansas or trinidad colorado or steamboat

Springs these are starting to become those check boxes on must visit places to go and ride gravel that’s amazing and it’s short little lifespan so far yeah growing up in the midwest my whole life i’ve i’ve been surrounded by gravel my whole life that connection with gravel cycling it’s

Not weird to us because that’s literally what we have just here in lancaster county which is where lincoln nebraska is there’s 1468 miles of gravel roads just in our county around lincoln nebraska to me it’s just fun because you can get out and you can explore you can go from

Small town like these funky little small towns you would never go to unless you’re riding your bike and you know now like thinking about emporia kansas you know would you ever think you’d be going to emporia kansas like that’s a you know the unbound gravel event now that’s like

You must do that event now if you’re in the gravel so would you ever think you’d be doing that like 10 years ago or 20 years ago in pory kansas probably not so you know it’s really cool to see the midwest you know it being kind of the epicenter of this gravel revolution

And lincoln being part of that too so pretty proud [Applause] [Applause] everyone out there is fighting so hard just to get to the finish line and the volunteers are making it a little bit better by being so supportive and just doing anything you know anticipating your needs before you can even state them [Applause] [Applause] you know it’s just it’s camaraderie and community and steamboat pretty much i mean these county roads are amazing i know everybody says it but they really are yeah no here on the right water water on your head no i need water in my body um about halfway done i’ve exploded twice

Yeah hit me with gravel bad ass it’s amazing [Applause] it’s amazing it’s like it’s my first uh gravel race which 144 miles for the first one and i’m like wow but you know we’re more than halfway done so i’m just having a great time It’s uh well for me um i’m here with the black foxes and there’s it’s all about community it’s all about communities thank you [Applause] we’re really behind but it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter as long as we make it yeah what’s your goal today um to make it gravel is so like inviting to everyone because there’s no rules lack of rules is probably a better way to say

It yeah i mean we have nine basic rules of gravel worlds you know and the first one is the most important one is don’t be lame kind of live by the golden rule so being lame covers a lot of different stuff you know like being mean to our

Volunteers or you know not being cool at a small town convenience store um but yeah it’s pretty loose i mean that’s where you know the whole idea behind the pcl is we’re trying to break down barriers for participation and not have a lot of excess you know requirements or rules involved so as

Long as you’re cool you show up you ride your bike you’re pretty much included man so that’s that’s all i really care about all right little mermaid up and out so the crit and gravel communities are different and it’s not to say that there isn’t a community with crit racing i think there

Is but it’s maybe not something that you experience in the race it’s more something you experience outside of the race whereas in gravel a lot of times the community is in the race with you [Applause] you have people that you’ve never met before that you might end up spending 100 miles with and you get to know them in this really kind of almost strangely intimate way because you’re both pushing these really intense physical boundaries and you’re doing that together and because you’re together

It’s better than if you were alone [Applause] Oh lauren’s broke my lube bottle [Applause] gravel’s freedom so you know i’ve worked road racing for the last four or five years this is much more individual it’s a much more individual test cycling’s a weird sport it’s a team sport practice it’s an individual sport practice by teams which

Makes it really hard this is really an individual test you have teammates they’re there maybe they’re not but it’s all about what you can do on the day your legs your bike and your fruit makes it a lot more fun for me gravel racing is a lot more punchier

Than iron man and so the encouragement comes when you get into these groups where you’re going as hard as possible going up these hills and you’re working as a collective crew and then bombing down the hills together and so in that sense we are working as a team

And even if someone drops off or goes ahead you know that’s the nature of the race but within the context of the race we help everyone and so i’ve never experienced that before and it just it just makes it way more fun and way more challenging as well because if you have

A group of five people you want to stay with them rather than ride alone for 100 miles and so you want to push that extra bit up that hill so you can stay with that front group The difference between riding and especially like having a group of women is just so easy that’s so cool it was like a group of we probably had like 10 women all day yeah and then we have another one together we work together push each other and just awesome to finish together

There was a need in cycling for for something that just let everybody in and that’s what gravel has become it’s the the culture that it is and i think that that is something that’s become very unique in cycling and in this world really it’s very encouraging and i want to do

It again next year even though it’s so yeah i think future gravel i hope it continues to grow i hope people continue to find the sport i hope people don’t feel obligated to race and to pay money to ride gravel i hope they just you know go out their

Front door and find those forest service roads and recreate responsibly and feel a desire to conserve these beautiful environments that we get to ride in what is gravel why is it so cool you know it’s definitely for me it’s freedom it’s finding i think finding the limit

And then pushing past it it’s dirty rides it’s cold rides um it really is only limited by your imagination i think all you need to do is have a bike you can sign up doesn’t it honestly doesn’t even matter what the bike is get a bike that has wheels um and tires

That you can basically go anywhere and then just start exploring because that’s that’s the most fun you’ll ever have on two wheels gosh it’s just hard as hell uh it is it is unique it’s special uh it’s it’s worth protecting and it’s something that has helped change my life and it’s something that’s

Helped change the lives of so many people and it’s helped people fall in love with cycling again what gravel cycling is to me is is the freedom to go anywhere paved road and dirt road and a little bit of single track and just wherever your your heart takes you and and um and

To me that’s sort of the purest essence of cycling just you know getting on the bike and riding You