Gravel Racing is HARD! (Full Race Breakdown – Belgian Waffle Ride Utah)

This is the full race recap of my effort at the belgian waffle ride in Cedar City Utah. I walk you through the whole race, breakdown each sector, and give you my cycling commentary as the gravel race plays out.

The belgian waffle ride has a mission to be known as the hardest one day bike races in North America, and this gravel race in Cedar City, Utah lives up to that goal. This gravel race had one of the best courses ive ever ridden. It wasn’t too difficult so if you had good base fitness and bike handling skills, you felt pretty competitive for a while.

BIKE SETUP :
Bike – Canyon Grail
Wheels – IRC double cross 38s on Princeton carbonworks rims
Gearing – 2x 50/34 – 11/40
Road Shoes and pedals

NUTRITION:
(What I started with)
x2 cups of coffee
600 calories in SIS gels
900 calories in bottles
x2 30g bottles of ketones (should be illegal)
(What I got on the road)
2 waters
4 SIS gels
1 Cliff Block

STRAVA
https://www.strava.com/activities/4208272197/analysis

Check out Dylan and his top 5 finish here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri8mtN5O-0o

DAILY VLOG VIDEOS:
Day 1 – https://youtu.be/4SYlO9PmVNs
Day 2 – https://youtu.be/f_8AO3wAGIQ
Day 3 – https://youtu.be/uWI7UF6inKU
Day 4 – https://youtu.be/FGH5k1SO5bk

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#gravelracing #cycling #bikeracing #gravelbike

0:00 Quick Recap
0:48 My setup
1:59 The Start
7:26 54min
9:02 1hr 30min
11:48 2hr 10min
13:48 2hr 45min
15:35 3hr 25min
17:49 4hr 23min
20:05 5hr 18min
22:23 5hr 42
25:51 Final time & power

Three two one here we go the canyon waffle ride underway okay oh yeah you all right Okay so before we jump into the race i want to break down how i’m feeling how i’m going into this and my uh gear setup now the day of the race my whoop score was 85 so great i am feeling super good which was good to see that

Tuesday and wednesday i was in the red pretty much the whole week i was a turd now have you ever seen this video where this guy’s bandaged up he has everything he can possibly put on him to help him perform and then even with all those things that

Are trying to help him out he just fails instantly that’s kind of how i’m doing i am bandaged up here i’ve got an arrow helmet try to help me go fast i’ve got 60 milligrams of ketones that’s a lot i’ve got my amp lotion on my legs i’ve

Got 600 calories 300 milligrams of caffeine uh in gels on me i’ve got 900 calories 300 grams of carbs in my bottles i’ve got 50 psi on 38 with aero wheels from princeton so my setup is fast i’ve also got super stiff road shoes i’m on the canyon grail which

Has a gear ratio that my best is 34 40 i’m really happy with this setup i’m feeling good and we’re ready to just go as hard as we possibly can my training has been really good going into this and so we’re gonna break this down into the different sectors so the first like

Sector one and two uh of gravel this includes our little lead in here um it’s 124 miles 200 kilometers everyone’s got their masks on at the start everyone’s really trying to vie for the front because there’s i mean there’s a lot of people here and there’s a big pinch point

Now right here instantly there’s a crash and what actually ended up happening is that guy like pushed my back brake in i lost my back brake for a little while it came back eventually but it was really scary uh to almost have my race ended immediately

So now we go through this tunnel and i knew that we pre-ridden this so i knew this was going to be an important part i thought i was far enough up front everyone’s just getting crammed in here everyone can’t go and this is exactly what travis had predicted is that it was

Gonna just be a total [ __ ] show here you can see cole in the white he actually dropped his chain so he’s running through the tunnel um and so now full gas i mean you have just shot out of a cannon where you were you know it’s cold it’s like 40 degrees

That was a big component of it is how cold it was at the start so i’ve i was actually really dialed in my ldl gear i had like a thermal jacket and a vest gloves the whole the whole thing but so we are now trying to catch the front group

You can’t see anything i know that you can see quite well here but the dust was so bad i mean i could not see the front i didn’t know how far they were and when we pre-rode this one of the biggest mistakes is that when me and travis pre-rode this we did not

Ride it at race pace and the gravel is completely different when you are doing 25 30 miles an hour versus doing 17. so everything felt way more rough and loose and just really unfamiliar and so now again my legs feel like a ton of bricks because there was really

No warm-up i mean we coasted into this little tunnel and then all of a sudden you are full gas and so i’m trying to stay on some wheels we’re going over this climb guys are getting spit out there’s gaps everywhere and i’m thinking this was it i mean i’ve made it a whole

One mile into the race before i’m no longer in contention uh and i you know i don’t even know what position i’m in i don’t know how far up the front group is we finally do come together and i’m like huh whoo glad that uh i saved this one right so i’m

Kind of trying to regroup gather myself and then there’s a big wreck and it’s so difficult to make quick adjustments because of how the gravel is so i saw that wreck coming from a while but i just couldn’t stop or couldn’t get around it so now again full gas chasing we’re

Trying to get back onto the group and we really need to get back on it before we start going downhill so you can see the front group up there it’s it’s a little hard to see uh but i don’t know how far away they are i don’t know if we’re gonna catch i

Don’t know anything man um it’s we are at elevation so it’s about almost 6 000 feet above sea level and so then with the full gas poop pants effort right off the beginning and it being cold my brain is dead i really have no idea what’s going on i have no far

I have no idea how far back i am i’m just trying to pedal and so then now we hit the next dirt section which this is like slightly downhill and again i know that it maybe looks like you can see you can’t see you can’t see 20 feet 30

Feet in front of you and so if someone crashes which a lot of people were you could just full send right over the top of them and so i was being a little bit cautious here uh definitely through these tunnels i was just also really disappointed with how my legs felt in that

Opening of 10 minutes they just felt like absolute bricks i don’t know kind of intimidated a little bit thinking oh man i just do not have it today uh trying to stay on these guys wheels i the whole time i was sort of always just like a bike or two off of

Everyone’s wheel and i just think that that comes from i just wasn’t comfortable not knowing where i was going or what like i couldn’t see i wanted to see i wanted to see what i was riding over uh we’re flying through it’s such a beautiful scenery

For one it was gorgeous um the gravel’s pretty chunky here again at full gas race pace it is completely different than we pre-wrote it we do finally have everyone come together and so i guess i’ve made the front group but it’s really big and so then i’m expecting you know that

This group is going to probably stay this size for a little bit also again just not really thinking at elevation early the whole thing my brain was just turned off and at this point i should have fought as hard as i could to get to the front we didn’t pre-ride this part of

The course and uh or when we turned right here and i should have because i was way out of position you know probably like top 50 here now unfortunately this next section is it was the most important section and i have no footage of it my gopro died

And once we hit this section there was no way i could take my hand off to change the battery so as we turn off this road section and to basically where the first climb was you know you can just see how way out of position i am i’m probably top

50 and i i just didn’t know man i just had no idea i guess how skinny this road was or how it was going to play out but this is where the front just lit it up and i could see nothing and i i don’t have really a good gopro shot this was

Probably one of the most beautiful sections of the race and the gopro just didn’t get it right but is what it is you couldn’t see anything and there were some downhill sections where you were just full sending into dust and there could be someone crashed i don’t know

There could be huge holes you just don’t know and so we hit the first kom and i started really feeling good my legs just came to um i was feeling super confident and then so once i kind of got through a few guys i’d realized

The front group is gone i can’t even see them so by the time i got to the front of the second group it’s like shoot dude the race is pretty much over and then there’s this huge downhill section that i don’t have on footage and you know is everyone just doing what

They could to try to form their group okay so this next section for me personally was one of the hardest sections because guys were really trying to bridge up to groups they were trying to get back on terms with the race you know average 274 for this section

Which doesn’t sound like a whole lot but it really was um i got into a decent group of some strong guys and we were kind of picking up um people getting blown off from the front group i have no idea where i am on the road at this point

I’m really starting to feel good it sort of feels like we’re maybe the second or third group on the road at this point and then it starts getting pretty technical they have these little over under things and now we’re into these long stretches where the road is sort of split and line

Choice was so important i swear it was like if you chose the wrong side of the road you’d be doing 50 percent more energy or hit a patch of sand and go to a complete stop it was uh it was crazy how different one line was and it would change

And so here i’m feeling super good and so now i’m just powering i’m getting over this the the 50 psi and my 38s um are keeping me super efficient like i’m rolling so fast it is way unstable that was the big issue though is that i would hit little bumps and i

Kept coming unclipped like there was because of the psi being so hard i’d hit little bumps and my literally my shoes would just come out of the pedals which was something that i’ve really never experienced i’m pushing the pace this kid had caught us and is just drilling it i mean i’m doing

Like 300 350 watts in his draft now i’m going to kind of try to show you how the groups were forming right so there you got the front group of like seven dylan johnson he’s in it he did a phenomenal uh then you’ve got a bunch of guys blown

Out of that front group kind of coming backwards then you had a good sized group um that was like a chase group okay and then my group which is a handful of us trying to get back on terms right and so i guess we’re like the fourth group on

The road at this moment then you have a bunch of guys that are just blown out of everyone and they’re going back either having issues then you had a pretty good sized group of some fast guys coming um and then pretty much everyone else you know sort of just at this point

Going you know what our day’s probably over we’re just gonna try to enjoy the ride um you know a lot of people had crashes mechanicals issues in the beginning so i’m really grateful that i i didn’t have any mechanicals the next sector is feels pretty flat but there’s just a lot

Of little technical aspects we hit some sand on this section uh we’re about two hours in at this point and so again the left or right you know you could just be hauling balls and then all of a sudden the lane that you were in was terrible um

I like i said i was always just slightly off everyone i was constantly trying to get back on terms uh hitting some sand now this sand was super deep and there was a lot of times where it was very easy for you to unclip and then have to walk

I didn’t have to do that i was able to keep my power up and really push through but again some you can see the guy on the left he had such a better line i’m just you know in the beach sand but i’m trying to save my power

Right so right now i could bridge that gap in front of me to this dude but i’m not gonna be able to see where i’m going if i’m right on his wheel and then i’m gonna have to burn a match and i’m trying to keep it pretty steady the whole time

My power wise especially for this event if i just stay zone 3 low zone 4 i should be really good so then now we get into a little more sand and a little bit of a climb everything’s good my chain though is so dry my chain was

Making noises i’ve never heard a chain make before it felt like it was gonna snap at any moment so now here’s kind of how the groups are there was a few guys just up the road within bridgeable distance that i could get to uh but there was also a bunch of guys

Behind me and so then i kind of had to make this decision on what which group i was going to go with and i chose to stop and get some chain lube and then followed the group behind me thinking that the group behind me we could

Get together and chase down the group in front of us which actually ended up working out great so then now this next section is sort of not a whole lot going on but there was a big road climb on this section so on the road you can

See that it’s me and these these three other guys and we’re kind of trying to catch this uh the little blue four guys up the road we’re not really making any sort of gain on them and there’s a huge group behind us that is just motoring

So me and these three other guys sort of make the collective decision to ease up and go back to the group that’s gaining on us anyway right and so which was a great decision because you could be going so hard uh but if there’s like this group

They are not going that hard and they’re just covering so much distance so it was really good to get in with them especially going into the first or i think the second kom now that this big climb here is on road so again my 50 psi my 38’s my irc’s uh

They’re called the double cross they were rolling so fast now guys started to break up here it was pretty difficult it’s pretty long climb and so then you’ve got these guys up front that are pushing the pace and i had to try to bridge this gap you know i again

It’s really hard to know who’s strong and who’s not who’s feeling it um but on this climb it did that big group there i don’t want to say it split in half but a few people didn’t make it over this uh this big road climb yeah my time on this kom

Actually gave me third overall in my age group for the km competition so we get over the top everyone’s sort of shaking their legs out uh trying to feel out what this next section is going to be like feeling pretty good at this point you know i’ve put down some good calories

Some good carbs those ketones are freaking magic and so then this next section has a little bit of technicality to it and then a huge road section so as we get into this more technical spot all i’m trying to think is i have to stay with this group to the road and

You know again the whole time i’m just bike links off of people i don’t really know why other than i was just nervous maybe i’m not really sure getting over here now some guys it seemed like they didn’t have the right gearing this guy i know he kind of went off the

Side there but a lot of people they were grinding up these little pitches so my 34 40 i was able to spin i was able to keep the legs light i was able to not have to put a ton of torque and slip because that’s one of the biggest

Things with the gravel is that you know if you have a lot of torque you know you’re just spinning your wheels so a lot of your energy and your power is going to rotating your wheel and not actually moving forward so i’m doing the best i can to try to

Stay with this group we’re flying the dust was so bad you could you could like literally you could see nothing i couldn’t see what was happening i couldn’t see what was coming up and so this often would have me sort of fall off a little bit just so that i could see

Anything and also my glasses the visibility was was something i did i hadn’t really expected but my glasses sort of uh had this like coat of dust on it so there was like really bad glare it’s kind of insane but we get to the road section this group is

Full of some seriously strong diesel type motors i mean they are rolling and so then i we pre-rode this i knew what to expect here i knew that we were coming into a big road section so i could just sort of really not have to worry about

Burning any matches like i just stay on this group and then i can recover for a while which is what ended up happening uh the group here sort of settled down this was the easiest part of the race so what are we like almost four hours in before we really started

Sort of had a recovery period all right so we only have 35 miles left to go we’re four hours 23 minutes into this i think i’m about top 40 going into an another pretty technical gravel section and the trek rider and the stan’s no two that’s the the leader of the the women’s

Division those two were so strong i mean they were pushing the pace uh this trek guy was just like hands down the strongest in the group but what was so crazy is you know because i think it’s so flat and there’s a lot of wind

Uh it was really hard to get away from anyone i mean you could spend so much energy on the front and really do no damage and so i’m trying to just stay with these guys i popped another ketone you know so i did 30 milligrams at the

Start then i did another 30 milligrams around this point so i’m feeling really good you can see here she’s the leader of the the female division the women division and right there she’s like slipping and spinning and i saw a lot of people doing that um

Maybe just not the right gearing or just being over twerked on some of these uh slippery climbs and not that she doesn’t know how to write gravel i’m just saying in general there is a skill set to knowing how to apply power to gravel roads and how to climb

Where you’re not just using raw power or torque and being really efficient so i got through there i got through that section there were some pretty difficult times but i made it i’m so excited i’m so stoked on where i am and how i’m feeling we are headed into the hardest part of

The ride which is this big sandy climb everyone here is kind of pace lining a little bit everyone’s you know maybe 70 in i mean we’re wanting to catch as many people as we can but no one’s really trying to completely empty the tank there’s a big road section and a bit of

A climb we had a tailwind section here and if everyone really wanted to empty the tank i think we could have made up a lot of time here but pretty much everyone wanted to just stay on wheels i know i did i wanted to

Save as much as i could coming up to the main climb lucas he had crashed um and so he was out of the front group which is a bummer we’re all kind of just getting ready for the next and hardest part of the race all right so going into the big climb

The hardest section on this course uh we’re about five hours in only 18 miles left i had to stop and get some uh some food and some fuel this was the first rest stop that i stopped at and velofix here he got me downloaded with a bottle

Now they made a change last minute that you could have personal support which really made it for a lot of hitters or people who had a lot of support out here to have quite an advantage because you didn’t have to stop at the rest stops you had people all over the place

And and due to kova they just thought like that’s a better way to do it is to have your own personal support than everyone hanging out at a rest stop um so for the most part i brought enough fuel with me to get me to

This point and so i hadn’t had to use any public rest stops um until that one and i grabbed like i don’t know eight sis gels and i had that one bottle from velofix that he gave me and so the sis gels are really thin like the viscosity is

Very watery and so even though i didn’t have a ton of water at this point um i could use those gels almost to hydrate myself as well but this climb is so sandy it’s so steep it was really hot it was really strange to go from like 35 in the morning to right

Here it felt like a thousand degrees and there’s there’s just no way you’re gonna find some big effort inside of you it’s just more about not completely blowing up because there’s a couple sections on this where it’s so sandy and so steep that you’re having to

Do four 500 watts just to stay upright and so you know if you are in the red and you get to a point where you can no longer sustain that and if you unclipped and had to walk it would be real you could lose a minute you could lose

Two minutes you could lose so much time and just i guess mentally be so cracked so i just sort of held you know high zone three low zone four feeling really good at this climb uh knowing that what’s coming next is a big downhill and that single track

And so this is it this is the final run in uh we’re 14 miles left to go we’ve got a good size downhill and then that crazy single track and so until this point i feel like my tire choice had been spot on like it was really good it was super fast

It was a little hard to control in some points but ultimately i think it was the fastest setup coming down into this section and especially the single track i should have stopped and at the top and maybe let some pressure out i think if i let some pressure out i

Could have actually went five minutes faster in this last section just because you know of how it was really hard to control this sandy section we i did that twice in our pre-ride so i kind of knew a little bit about this section also at this point i was more afraid of

A mechanical so close to the finish than really improving my position uh you know i mean i’m not gonna catch anyone in front it’s just more about not losing any positions in the group that we’re in and so we kind of had this group of a few people you know not full gas

Racing but just kind of staying together let’s get to the single track together let’s go down these these hills let’s keep it safe and so you know we’re headed towards that single track and uh i think we have maybe a group of like six here and i can’t see really anyone

Up the road so i have no idea you know if we’re even gonna catch anyone or not and again like i said right here i should have aired down if i had dropped 20 psi right here even though i feel like oh i’m gonna stop and i’m gonna lose all this time

I would have gained it would have been it would have been huge it would have been so much better because at least in the beginning it wasn’t so bad but the end of this single track is so rocky and bumpy that i mean it was almost like i was on a

Pogo stick i kept coming unclipped um it was almost impossible to control the bike i was getting really frustrated it was like i hit every single possible rock which was kind of a bummer and so then the two guys in the blue and yellow and the stan’s no tubes

Uh woman they kind of they were gone um i was stuck behind this guy for a little bit he let me buy and i thought i was gonna catch those other people but again like i said the 50 psi was not good for this single track great for everything else not good here

Now unfortunately my gopro dies uh i i had three batteries on me and somehow they just all popped out it was really bump anyway lost my batteries and so i couldn’t change my battery for the fin the finish i don’t have the finish on film which is super irritating um but so we

Come out of the single track and there’s about i have a group of like four or five and it was really fast through like these little um walk paths and and bike paths and so here’s kind of the reenactment of the finish is that we come

In to the final sprint we’ve got lucas on the front we’ve got i’m on the back of this group here and uh this guy in the y he takes off he’s sprinting i wish i had this on footage because i’m staying on his wheel and the last minute i actually out sprinted someone

I won the pack sprint out of the group that we were with then i did a wheelie and then i did a backflip and then i turned into a banana i have no footage of it but trust me it’s what happened so my finish time was six hours 34

Minutes that’s 39 minutes off of first uh the winner’s time was five hours 55 minutes which is honestly almost exactly i think i was 40 minutes off of first uh last year at belgian waffle so but i did get 26th overall sixth in my age group my normalized power for the whole six

Hours 34 minutes was 245 watts that’s 3.5 watts per kilo normalized that’s a lot uh energy wise i burned 5000 calories you know had a huge day on the bike and look there’s no vegan excuses because i rode to the best of my potential i only have vegan excuses when something

Happens that stops me from doing what i know i could have done my power my energy my the way i rode physically was about as the best i could have expected and so i can’t be down about that at all my boy travis you know he was drives all the way out

Here this was a big event for him he was ready for it he had trained for it and then he had no luck uh cole kessler also super strong no luck i mean there were so many people that had so many issues and i didn’t have any of those issues right

I mean i had my own little issues but nothing that stopped me from being the best i could physically be and i know i make a lot of excuses sometimes but the thing is that i don’t care if i get last place if i get lapped a hundred times

In a one mile crit if i did the best i know i physically could do that if i lived up to my potential i’m always going to be happy with that and so with how much this trip cost and how much time we put into it and how i was away

From my family for so long there was a lot of pressure to not completely suck and so to do better than i did last year so bwr i got 40th last year was one of my most proudest results and then to get 26th here this year um to do well

I am i’m just super proud of it man i’m super stoked on this and again maybe in the beginning i could have done a little more to have been further up the road but if i was with that front group i just can’t imagine that i could have stayed with them given

How hard i had to ride for 26th place the amount of support that i got from canyon from irc from elio uh was huge uh so i just want to say a huge thank you to those guys and just the event you know michael marks he puts on a phenomenal event

The belgian waffle like ethos is just you know the hardest one day ride uh ever and it just lives up to that i mean this course was phenomenal it was one of my favorite courses i’ve ever ridden because there wasn’t any huge um physical deciders until the very end so

You could if you had some technical skills and you had some good base fitness you could feel competitive all the way into that last climb and so i thought it was a really fair and and like overall good course can’t wait to do it next year guys i hope you enjoyed the video

Um i’m really proud of this result if you want to go back and watch the four days leading up to this i daily vlogged you know our little trip leading into this and as always guys vegan cyclists Up