Battling ELITE Gravel Racers in the Switzerland Mountains! // Gravel Suisse Full Race Analysis

Woah, what an experience! It came down to the wire!
https://ucigravelsuisse.com/en/

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believe it or not the UCI gravel Switzerland is my first ever competitive gravel event and I was in with the elites now I learned a lot considering this was my first proper gravel race and there were lots of long climbs short sharp steep climbs technical descents well technical climbs too and on the final 9 km climb I had to dig pretty deep to catch that one ride I could see for ages in front of me but did I catch it welcome back to the channel everybody this video is all about the UCI gravel Switzerland event taking place in V now these type of events are slightly different to what you’ve seen maybe in the US like the lifetime Grand Prix for example in a sense you can finish in the top 25% of these and technically qualify for your category to represent your country at the UCI World Championships because I was categorized as an elite because of my race license finish in the top 25% of just the 70 or so riders that were in my group would be a challenge however this was not my goal my goal was to pick up some experience and see what this gravel is all about now in some ways this event really suited me because there was a lot of climbing 100 kilm and 2,000 800 M the final climb would be about 9 km long at an average of 7 to 8% now because it’s on gravel that would take a long time to complete however it’s not just the case of going uphill you have to go downhill as well there’s also a lot of factors that come into play such as your equipment uh Tire choices and just how comfortable you are riding Offroad now let’s be real here I ride gravel I ride Offroad usually in the winter because in whales it’s a lot more fun I’ve now found to ride off-road when the weather’s not good at all and just have some fun and adventure and yet still get the hours in on the bike so I can’t really remember the last time I rode my gravel bike not properly anyway in anger I certainly don’t do any indoors on it I leave that to indoors or out on the road okay so pressure off excuses are in so like I said this was taking place in V which is in the VA region of Switzerland as you’ll see from the video there are some epic places to ride around here both on road and off-road now the nature of the course a lot of the climbing comes in the first sort of 40 km and then there’s a big chunk of downhill flat if you will and then there’s a lot of climbing approximately 8 to 900 M to climb back up to the finish at Villa now there were some big names here are the the writers that I recognized at least were Chad Hager ex former world tour tour to France cyclist cam Mason who is a phenomenal psych cross Rider multiple uh titles national titles to his name and enjoy watching him racing in the super Prestige races on TV in the winter also has a YouTube channel as well and the other name I recognize was actually Oliver Goda who rides for the balaza Trek team uh and actually won I think the mayorca 312 the year that I did it since then we’ve actually messaged each other a couple of times now spoil alert he actually won this event so shapo right let’s get into it then so the start on the first 25 km I really didn’t know what to expect I kind of assumed it would be a psycho cross St start and I wasn’t disappointed the only thing was it was uphill so it was even harder to get going and as a road Rider I’m still yet to get used to this feeling of a very very spongy Tire underneath me there’s a reason why I prefer the road I think over gravel and that’s because of the the the sheer resistance you have to overcome when you’re just riding along so during this event I had to work out like what is the etiquette like what do people do in these gravel events uh even if you’re a little bit further back or if you’re at the front I had to figure all this out so I was a complete first timer like I’ve done battle on the beach I’ve done some Pyle AC cross event but I’ve never done something like this so the first couple of kilometers were whizzing on the TAC I actually passed Charlie she clambered out to the campsite and taking a video of me going past just on the back of the group like I said there was about 70 of us in that Elite group and it was a good thing actually that it was Tac for the first section because it gave me a chance just to get a feel for how my body was doing uh of course I was coming down with an illness which there then turned into a viral infection uh chest infection uh actually the day after this event so I was coming down with something but I had to know what were my limits today so thankfully we had this Tac section to get myself into it I actually lost contact with the group just 10 km in but the first 10 15 20 25 km of this event were very grippy hard uphill very short downhills like it was just up felt like it was uphill all the time but even though I’d lost contact with the group I knew that this is a long day like I had in my mind that this was going to take like five hours and it would be slow going and people would generally get tired towards the end so I just had to keep plugging away even if I’d lost the group really early i’ lost a lot earlier than I thought I would keep plugging away things and you know treat every riders in front of me as another Target to focus on so during this first 25k we actually climbed to the highest point of the wall race which was just a smidge under 1,800 M and we popped out at the top of the C dequa which is the road climb that I won the time troll on the day before or the evening before and we hopped on the road for just a very short section and then we jumped a curb and we hit what was probably uh one of the hardest sections of the whole course I I wasn’t expecting it it was extremely steep very loose gravel you had to be very careful about where you were picking your lines and there was a couple of people that had to get off and walk and I knew it wasn’t just with nobody like the riders that were there were obviously Elite Riders they they kind of knew what they were doing and like for them to get off and walk at some point like I knew it must be quite tricky but you know I have ridden gravel a little bit and I’ve also got a little bit of what per kilogram to spare and I would just pray that I could keep grip at these crucial moments and thankfully I did and I got over the top and I managed to make up a couple of places just by riding that short 500 M 18% section now let’s talk about equipment because I think it makes a massive difference I don’t think actually it does make a massive difference you know I’m a massive fan I’m a big fan of Dylan Johnson’s stuff and he’s definitely one for equipment choices and you know really thinking about these things and taking it to the end degree I’m I’m not so much like that when it comes to gravel because like I said it’s something that I only ride in the winter when the weather’s bad and I just want to enjoy riding my bike it adds a different element to my cycling it might be something I do more in the future but today for this event I was essentially not invested enough to worry about what equipment I was using however I was running the panasa gravel King semi slicks 43 mm and running them about 20 psi now 43 mil is about as wide as I can get on this Factor LS I did think about investing in different tires but then I thought the cost per use I’m not actually going to ride much more so shall I just stick with the tires I’ve already had so that’s what influenced my decision to just stick with tires the pan Racers that I already own but to be honest they Rod really well there was a lot of rad section to deal with so the really slick sent line was was perfect actually and then of course the the gravel there was only a couple of tricky sections you know corners and stuff that I had to be careful on but really speaking that was kind of okay puncture protection wise I had a I had a clean run I had zero Mechanicals at all throughout the whole event and as many people have told me that is part of the game uh I’m I’m wearing my my Camel Back bladder down the front of my jersey and I was again going with the strategy of having 120 g of carbs per 750 mil bottle on my bike and then drinking half of it per hour and diluting it with the water in the Camel Back worked perfectly again and it’s a strategy I’ve implemented over the last couple of events again I relied on just gels as well so nutritionally I was going well so around about halfway into the event I started to realize that this terrain was a lot faster than I anticipated whenever I done you know a temple ride or an endurance ride on gravel here in South Wales I’m always amazed at how slow I go like at least 18 19 km per hour average un that’s with some fast you know straight descent but this was this was fast this was 20 25 km/ hour average so far in fact this point we’re about to get to I start to average closer to 28 km/ hour but from 25 to 50 km it was the main sort of technical section of the course there was a lot of bootful scenery in this section as well and I didn’t really get a chance as much as I’d like to look at it I was having to focus too much on you know the drain covers uh the drains that were running across the gravel roads the you know the big rocks in certain places the corners where the loose gravel was where the slightly grippier gravel was and obviously some of the faster people that coming past me on some of these descents but like I said this is where I learned a good few things this section about the 50 km Mark I started averaging nearly upwards of 30 km per hour so these were a few things I learned so some Riders are seriously good downhill these events involve a lot of solo riding for the most part and it’s as much about going fast as it is riding thoughtfully now what I mean by that is you can take you know the fastest lines down these descents and you can really rip down it and things but I saw that happen maybe six times to six different people who had come pass me on The Descent and I’d be like waa they’re they’re absolutely pushing it maybe they’re in control but maybe two minutes later I saw them at the side of the road putting their thumb on their tire and like hoping it would seal slow and steady wins the race except I didn’t win the race so we emerged at the other side of the C de laqua Valley and we hit the tarmak and I was told that they wanted to do the descent into the valley uh Offroad but the weather had made that section A lot worse and we actually had to ride a road section more than I think they wanted us to um so I think it was a good call by the organization not that I knew what that off-road section was like but even for me I think riding on the road uh suited me better so I wasn’t complaining about it I enjoy enjoyed the off-road descent section that we did before we got to this um big road section but certainly I think a lot of people would have enjoyed uh more um gravel but it is what it is it’s Dynamic I was learning that these things are constantly throwing things at you on this road section this is probably from about halfway to about 75 km um from the mid distance Mark we hit a climb called the f I don’t know if you pronounce the Zed and a big fast descent now this climb actually before The Descent was uh a pretty substantial one but obviously being on gravel bikes and tires and whatnot like we were going a bit slower than we would be on road bikes so it took a while to get over that climb and in my head I was still thinking like a roadie I was like oh it’s only going to take us a couple of minutes to get over this and then 10 minutes later you know we still got like 6 700 M to go so I hit this long fast descend down into the Valley and I’ve done this descent actually a couple of days previously and it was it was a wonderful section of Road and actually I had no difficulties at all I was in a little group my tires were rolling really well down there and then we HD a little bit of traffic and we got a little bit disjointed and I ended up being split from that group I was in there was only a couple of riders but I knew we were coming up to a big flat section and it was the worst time to lose that group at the end of the day you know it’s not claw RADS so you know situations like this can happen we go into the valley though and there was this amazing single like Lane gravel uh really reminded me of of Home riding like down Canal paths I nearly had an altercation with a little old lady who was coming around the corner with her like shopping trolley or whatever it was and I wish I got that on the GoPro cuz it was it was a bit of a I were going to have to bail out option here and and I had nowhere to go and thankfully I saved it but it I was not expecting her to be there but thankfully I made it down this section I could always see the group that had left me behind through the traffic just in front of me and I was sort of just going to get there just going to get there and I never did but we passed the UCI Cycling Center and a couple of those Riders actually stopped for a feed there and a couple of riders had obviously gone off aead and stayed ahead while those had been itching to get some fueling down them and we would actually see a couple of those riders that had kept going the ones that had lost through the traffic uh in this last 25 km so this final 25 km was the highlight for me so I’ve ridden some of it already before so I knew that the the sections were going to be quite grippy so quite hard um especially on tied legs we’re going to be three three and a half hours in at this point again much faster than I thought we’d be uh obviously the TAC section helped but certainly if I look back over the first half of the event even on the gravel it wasn’t actually that slow at all uh shapo to the Riders of in in in the lead and in the chasing groups though cuz they must have been absolutely flying and I can’t even comprehend that so we got into this final 20 km and I knew we had a section coming through The Vineyards that would prove to be incredibly decisive now the group I was in that actually caught me on the flat cycle path if you will through the valley um there was a good group of I’d say 15 of us there and we got to the section and it was almost like a like a farm track there was two lanes either side two narrow Tire width lanes and I decided to to ride in the group for as long as I thought uh would be comfortable and then I swung out to the other side and I just went up the left hand side of everybody and I made this decision because I knew the next section was going to be technical I knew it could be slow and there was a very steep bit involved that could create a little bit of um chaos and people could end up having to Dismount and walk up that section so I didn’t want to get caught out in any way uh and I also thought it would give me a head start for this final climb so we knew that there was rain forecast thankfully it hadn’t come in yet and to be honest it wouldn’t really have changed much on this bit anyway if it had been raining from start to finish it would have been a different story so coming through The Vineyards on the little ups and downs and the rollers I was in my element like I felt good everything was good and I’d left the group that I was in and I was now on my own not really thinking about bridging to anybody I just kind of thought let’s try and finish strong and also not even having a clue what position I was in anyway obviously losing the front group 10 CL in wasn’t ideal but I had no idea where it was so this last section we were like coming across main roads we were jumping like on gravel Main Road off gravel on the other side you know through some Farm track some of it was grassy some of it was grally it was all different kind of stones as well like not just not just smooth gravel like proper Rocky stuff and there was a couple of moments where I thought ooh like I can feel my rim going here against in against The Rock but thankfully we made it through popped out onto one of these final steep uh our client and I think this is where we started merging with the smaller Loop there was only two loops and the smaller loop I think it was merging with this here and I was getting passed by a couple of riders that were really going strong so I assumed not that I’d seen them earlier in the day so IID assumed that they were coming through on the shorter Loop a lot stronger than us so there was one final single track that proved to be very difficult and beyond my skill level it was tree routs everywhere there was like it was starting to get a bit slippery it was Dusty and it also just didn’t appeal to me to try and commit to riding the section and then falling over so instead I took the Bold move to jump off and to run it uh there was this was the only time I had to get off in the whole event and to be honest I’m not ashamed to say it either um so we got over the top of that down a really steep descent and then onto the final 8 9 km climb and this time was just felt like it was endless but because there was like switchbacks there were people on the side of Ro were cheering we were merging with the smaller groups so we were catching other Riders at some point it took my mind off how challenging it really was the gravel was going in between sort of you know quite rough to quite smooth we were having like concrete slabs in sections it was kind of like I guess maybe an old road that just you know really deteriorated potentially and we were just carving our way up the side of the mountain you know the main road would go this way and we would just be taking this scenic route through the trees the rain was starting to come down and you know I was battling with this Rider who was actually behind me I could always see him there there about like 15 20 seconds behind me in red I was like maybe I can hold him off like maybe I can hold him off I think pretty sure he’s in my vent so I could just keep him at a distance and then probably about 3 km from the top there was this like longer straight section and I was able to look up and I could see another Rider and he was going roughly the same Pace as me and when you see a rider doing roughly the same Pace as you you always feel like that person’s got a Target on their back it was a very slow progression of catching this Rider and I could see the kilometers tick by and I thought if I catch this Rider before the finish that will make my day so that became my goal in that final 3 km I knuckled down and I tried to close the gap on this Rider now there was a couple of sections I knew we were leaving the gravel soon and it was going to flatten off so I tried to make the most of that steep gravel section but actually I didn’t really make much inroads but when we took the sharp right and we got onto the tarm mark actually this was where I closed the Gap the most because I think that Rider could sense that they were close to the finish and they could also sense that I was chasing them as well because on one of the switchbacks they gave a good look down they could see you know you can tell you know when someone’s in your event or when someone’s chasing you you can tell the speed you can judge it I think we’ve all been there in that situation and on this slightly flat section and before it like was rising up for the last kilometer I could start to get a sense that I was really catching and that maybe this Rider had eased off because you know the Finish was just just there and it was a really tense final kilometer I was out to the saddle I was driving it I was giving it everything my heart rate just went like straight up even though I thought I couldn’t really give any more it literally came down to the last couple of hundred meters and I went past and we crossed the line virtually together I think he just about got all my wheel and we were coming across a line together uh just as it was raining just as it was like you know Ming up and you couldn’t really see anything so it was a really sort of atmospheric way to finish and I have to say I really enjoyed it like in the moments afterwards I was kind of like glad that’s done and also felt a bit an anti-climatic because you’d cross the line but there was no real sort of crowd there you had to descend a little bit to get to the actual finish you know to get your your medal and everything so it wasn’t until a couple of hours afterwards I was like oh I was really PR it that was really good fun I really enjoyed it and actually yeah I probably will do another one but that one was memorable it was hilly there was just some awesome scenery it was really good fun gravel like nothing overly challenging a couple of those you know steep sections and the routs and stuff that had to get off on the single track but aside from that I had a really good day out so I hope you enjoyed this video and maybe it’s where your appetite for a bit of gravel in Europe let me know anyway thank you for watching and I’ll see you next time