Bringing A ROAD BIKE To A GRAVEL RACE? (The Rock Cobbler Breakdown)

three two one off you go wave one power okay what this is torture oh sweet death embrace embrace me hey evc here do i even make videos anymore well here we go we're back with a video this is my first uh gravel event of the year the rock cobbler in bakersfield california we're gonna break down the course real quick so sector one the first 13 miles this is where you're breathing through your butthole this is where i am side by side with a world champion a national champion a world tour pro it's full gas sector 2 is where personally i brought the wrong bike this is where it was very technical single track super fast extremely fun um but much more for like a mountain bike sector three more of this please i mean just beautiful roads through like orange orchards not super difficult um it was great then you move on to sector four which is for me i brought the right bike huge long sustained climb on not very technical uh of a trail uh followed by some big road downhill then sector five is where i'm thinking about live choices just kind of rolling around by myself in the middle of nowhere thinking about why i do this to myself then you move on to sector six which is the final little bit has some serious hike a bike but also undoubtedly the funnest part of the course okay so i'm going to talk a little bit more about why i rode a road bike later on in the video but i rode a road bike the only difference between this and my bike were the tires the double cross irc 33s i ran those on the kadex um gravel wheels the knobbies were probably a little too knobby to be honest i i wish i had gone with a file tread i did run mountain bike pedals and mountain bike shoes because there was multiple hike-a-bike sections i was running the oval 44 uh rotor front ring and then a 10 or i'm sorry an 11 46 in the rear so i had the gearing i really feel comfortable with this bike i enjoyed this bike and to be honest i felt like this was the right decision for me i would run this again i was happy [Music] all right so let's jump into sector one zero to 13 miles now the first five or six miles was actually on like a bike path um very flat great warm up into what you know the day had in store uh and so to be honest though when i look back on this my bike setup is pure road right that's where it's fast i should have probably jumped off the front because we it got a little spicy here and there but for the most part guys were just noodling and waiting for the first gravel bit and so you know i should have gotten a little bit of time uh before the fireworks absolutely just went off because boy this race started fast now the hitters were absolutely here for the first gravel event in of the year and in bakersfield i mean i'm riding next to christopher blevins no asterisk not u23 not masters your current mountain bike world champion what is he doing bakersfield why is he here this is insane i'm right next to him so other names to mention which are so many but so definitely christopher blevins right world freaking champion uh then you have peter stetna who's a monster and looking very beautiful might i add you are so beautiful then you have jonathan baker cyclocross national champion phil tisman national champion and then john who's a 2019-2018 2021 gravel world champion so hitters i also want to say that jonathan baker i call him mustache man is just a great human and he got inspired and went out and redid the mauna kea impossible route blew the time out of the water and that was just really cool to see someone actually go and recreate that route of such a high like status so we are about to hit the first gravel section and i know that i haven't posted in a long time but after december when i trained like a pro i i have taken my fitness extremely seriously uh at the end of december i was able to clock out a 362 watt ftp at 155 pounds um i am flying right now i am rolling and so we just did team camp um i'm feeling as spunky and as confident as anyone could ever feel and even with that we hit this first set of climbs and i am breathing through my butthole it is so very difficult because this isn't my jam 600 watts not my jam but i am doing this kind of power next to the current mountain bike world champion christopher blevins i've got national champions in front of me like jonathan baker and phil tisman and all peter stetna i mean i am with the hitters and so even though this is like very difficult i am having the time of my life like it's it's very fun now the website for this event said this is not a race okay but upon further inspection it clearly is a race what the hell are you talking about now i really want top 10. i actually came into this thinking that it might be possible to get top three uh until i saw who was registered but so again i i i'm too confident in where my fitness currently is and i'm feeling too good at the moment right so we're gonna just go as hard as we can and and hopefully i'll make the second group on the road uh because dude it's splintered so very fast right there's just ones and twos all over this mountain within the first two or three miles of the first gravel bit i mean to give you some sort of context i averaged five watts per kilo for the first 12 or or maybe even 15 minutes and that's with the downhills right so and that that got me group three on the road i mean it was just the like for the first event of the year guys were flying now the event promoter put on these descents and there's only one way he's thinking i guess you just have to be prepared to die and so i am flying down these descents on my canyon on my road bike we check in with my road bike to see what she's doing [Music] now we get into some of the little more technical stuff we're still in sector one right okay but we uh it's spread out across the road the road this isn't a road but you know what i'm saying i'm here i want to be there and so we need to open up a full basket of berries and try to catch these guys because i know that i am going to lose all the time on the descent okay i chose a road bike so it's fast it's light if we're climbing i have an advantage to to be honest some of these guys on the mountain bikes probably were doing an extra 100 watts maybe 50 50 to 100 watts more than i was just because the bike was so efficient and so fast so we are just going and we're going and we're going we're trying to catch back on and it's so bumpy right um but i i am having so much fun and i'm gonna talk about this a whole lot about how amazing this course was and how dynamic it raced and that no matter what bike you brought you had the right bike at a certain point and so i catch on to this group i'm so stoked i'm feeling the love good job boys [Music] now dude almost takes me out but i don't care it's totally fine he's on a mountain bike um you know i'm not gonna fight for him on that like this guy's gonna fly through this section and this is the i brought the wrong bike part but no matter what bike you brought you could you will have said at one point i brought the wrong bike now i will say that if i could have ran my grail i would have um but the bike industry has three spokes and a pedal in stock and i could not get the components to get my grail running so it was either this or my mountain bike and i did bring my lux thinking maybe you know i don't know we'll see but in pre-writing part i i don't even think it was part of the course it was anyways i pre-wrote a little bit the day before and i felt like this was actually totally the way to go and now i ride a lot of dirt on my road bike so i felt very comfortable and i don't think i would have gone any faster on a mountain bike um really on the downhills like maybe but i'm getting past left and right to be expected okay i fully understand that i'm going to get passed on some of this real technical stuff what i'm looking to do is to make up time on some of the bigger climbs but this is where it gets really bad my bottle cages are road cages and so i've been dropping bottles all day and i have to have those bottles and this is a very like you know spoiler in the future i needed better bottle cages because liquid calories is the only way i operate and so if i lose a bottle i will blow into pieces i have to have them so until this point i i've actually dropped my bottles twice and had to go back and get them and so i'm really freaking out about that actually on that my bottles are not staying in the cages and so uh you know it is what it is that's a problem for future me to deal with but dude how beautiful is this if you thought hey i'm going to go ride in bakersfield bank still right i mean that's not you don't i didn't think of this uh we finally get off some of that single track and we head on to some real fast dirt now right around here was actually the first rest stop but we were full gas racing at this point so there's no reason to stop um and so then this is uh brian mccalla he won bwr i think 2018. super cool guy and he's very fast and he's like giving me all this encouragement like come on dude we can catch we can go and and i'm feeling on top of the moon okay but i am finishing my bottle of flow formulas which has 300 grams uh 300 calories 100 grams of carbs i i'm so dialed with my hydration and fueling program um as long as my bottles stay in my freaking cages and so at this point i'm feeling so belonging that's a word right like i've put in so much work into training uh i feel so confident right now we are flying i mean the watts are just insanity and i still feel very confident with where i am uh the group up the road is not too far away and so brian is just on the front he's drilling it i came by a couple times to like help pull just to let him know you know i'm not here to just suck wheel all day like i'm here to race i'm here to do do the business and so then we catch a couple guys this dude turns into a legend later on in the day um but again we are i mean not that far into the race and we have just been sustaining 400 watts non-stop to to be trying to catch the second group on the road so i don't even understand how stetna and blevins and and john up the road what are they doing they're doing seven watts per kilo up this stuff and so then now we start to hit this descent and it is so very bumpy um and i am thinking right now bro i'm gonna lose my bottles i'm gonna lose my bottles hopefully it's just one and then they yiddie themselves [Music] no that's 600 calories and 200 grams of carbs that for me is two hours of fuel is gone you're screwed i guess i could have turned around but we were going so fast and dude i i'm okay right now as long as there's a rest stop very shortly which there wasn't there wasn't a rest stop very shortly we are going to get back on he gives me a thumbs up he gives me the a-okay and i'm just hey i'm a-okay i'm feeling so good i'm feeling top of the world again though in my mind uh i gotta get bottles now again look at this course the the promoter i guess you just have to be prepared to die i mean he just putting you in situations where you gotta just send it and again this is where you know my bike obviously this setup this is the downside to it um but i still think that it did really well to be honest uh it was bumpy it was rough but it wasn't anything too crazy like you i did this on a road bike with 33s it's not that bad so sector three the more of this please uh great pavement and some really fast uh road but i'm out of calories so then this guy actually gave me one of his bottles hey massive legend here without this dude giving me one of his bottles and he also gave me a gel i would be dead i'd be dead out there on the road dude what [Music] loser you're a loser are you feeling sorry for yourself well you should be because you are dirt i should have rode that but i was so worried that i was just gonna go head over heels but then we hit this like tasty dirt waves i mean we were surfing um [Music] we're rolling through these like peach orchards orange orchards great dirt weather's perfect uh we're i don't know almost halfway right and i can see the map i can see that we got a big climb coming up uh i really really need calories though and so we do come to this rest stop and my only gripe about the event is is and this is how all events are to be honest the hydration is a very low quality the food is a very low quality it's sort of like the bargain bin at costco this little baby though killing it passing out stuff great great for the baby um but goose i mean it's just it's like you're drinking cements and the fluid stuff was not very good it doesn't matter i do have some calories let's go sector four is where i brought the right bike this is where i was going to make up all my time and get away or make a move you know at any point and so this downhill death to the right flats everywhere and that's a video i want to talk about because i've never flatted in a gravel race ever not once not one impossible route not one unbound not one bwr not one flat and it comes from the way that i ride so i'll talk about that at some point but this guy actually took a freaking digger i i didn't get it on gopro uh but he crashed pretty gnarly i was actually really surprised to see him pop back up so then we hit this absolute massive climb and this is exactly where my bike is going to shine because it's not very technical it's extremely steep but if you look at the times i mean on a road where i felt like i was doing the best i've ever done peter stetten is seven minutes faster than me i'm so if i wanted to get top ten i i don't even have i'm on like the fastest bike i can be the lightest bike i can be i've got the best fitness and i'm still not even in the category of the top 10 guys so let's break down the bikes though a little bit because you got options so personally road bike gravel like mountain bike i chose a road bike it's super light okay the speed is ex like high it's very efficient but the handling is bad the gravel bike is going to be right down the middle right it weighs a little more it's not as fast but it's got pretty good handling then your mountain bike is going to weigh the most it's not going to be as fast but the downhills you'll be absolutely flying so it really depends on who you are as a rider and what your skill sets are and since my skill set here was more fitness based and i don't really have the downhill skills anyways to get the most out of a mountain bike plus i don't ever really ride it i don't really ever ride my mountain bike i was really happy with my choice of road bike i don't think i would have gone any faster otherwise [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now we had a solid group um me these two guys uh there was it was um mariah was with us she was the winner of the the women's category and i think two other guys bridged to us but so we were all best friends having a good time i'm feeling great about myself but to this point of the day i'm actually starting to really have the effects of not fueling when i needed to right my two bottles that yielded out of my bike that is catching up to me uh at this point and i i'm starting to really hurt now in times past i have just buried myself until i can't even pedal anymore um and i probably would have done that uh but right here this really steep section i was in the wrong gear and i kind of slipped i don't think i dropped my chain but god damn it it was all over from there you know i was like getting ready to climb super hard and i was in my 46 and then i went to pedal and just spun out i lost my momentum doesn't really matter because i i was on the verge of exploding into pieces anyways and so then i kind of just rolled around in no man's land you know and i wanted this year to be a little bit different i didn't want to get so frustrated with myself it's really early in the year right it's february uh i'm really happy with where my fitness is uh and how i was riding i just was frustrated a little bit with maybe wasting an opportunity at top ten but you know you never know now sector six had some of the steepest hike-a-bike sections i've ever seen i mean just bananas now we are catching so there's two distances there's like the 90-mile and then maybe like a 60 mile and they all kind of loop back and so all of these people on this hill were you know not there it sounds douchey to say they're not in front of me but they're not in front of me they're on the different course and so i actually see my boy tomas here who's like a track sprinter all these people here you know they are like what did we get ourselves into but i loved this i loved this course so very much because there was so many different aspects to where it wasn't just are you the fittest guy in a tt position period you know there was so many dynamics to this course on on you as a writer like being able to one be fast on climbs but also good on descents uh handling the technical stuff i just thought to me the course raced so well and even though i'm kind of having a small pity party and i was kind of bummed about where i'm going to finish versus where i wanted to finish i'm still having a blast and that's rare in a gravel event to have fun at the end of the event but i'm still having a great time now this guy maybe not so much um you know legs tired after hiking and uh kind of caught this little section and just fell over we hit this final hike a bike section of the day it's so long you can see just how many people are are walking their bikes right this thing's brutal jesus what in the world what in the world is this what in the world yeah the trick is to definitely carry your bike oh man how's it going buddy i'm this course was so amazing because you're hating your life one second and then you're shredding some tasty dirt waves the next [Music] [Music] um things look kind of rough out there today well i'll tell you stu i did battle some humongous waves so last little climb of the day and again you're catching people that were doing the smaller course that kind of looped in um on onto this one so we're all sort of riding back together this guy was in in my division me and him kind of rode in together um both hurting right we're just kind of having pity parties together we catch up with uh ashton lambie who bro his quads are so big you can see the front side of his quad from the back side of him right he has the the 4k track record i believe world world record holder is what i'm saying so there's the leaderboard i finished 26th you know really the last two hours of the ride i was just kind of noodling around um but i'm happy with that you know in times past i wasn't but i'm stoked oh uh it was fun how did you finish i did win actually okay so blevins was uh on his dually mountain bike with gravel tires and he would put a minute into us the whole first half on every downhill but it was so far out luckily he got more pedally and i gotta use my big gears right on me congratulations so what do you think about gravel racing it's your first gravel race ever it's freaking insane man that was fun but that was insane like there were some sections there where like people were just hauling and i was just like grinding it because it's snarling it's a whole different world but it's fun like i love the technical part top top one thing that you're like next time this is going to be different more watts i think i might go camelback next year i'm not sure i don't know if i want to carry it and there were enough water stops that i always had water so if it weren't for like the extra people at the interim water stops it'd have been bad but there was water intermittently and that worked out so that was risky i think to not have the candle back so then how does your training work when you've got to work so much on this high-end short power yeah and then you do a six-hour ride well so this is the first season like i'm really focusing just on gravel um the last few years like i've done gravel races i either did them off of track season or i did like the shorter ones so like i did the rift in iceland a month before the world record in mexico but i only did the 100k and i'm doing one minute efforts like the day before so it's really just like my long ride for the week okay so tell me about this bowl um a guy had just passed me as we came through that little slot canyon thing and then that came around this corner and there's guys up on the hill and there's a ball on the left and and i start hearing hill there's a bull up there charging so we start like stopping and then like getting up on the side to get away from it or the ball takes an about turn and goes charging after the guy and head down tossed him up in the air like a ragdoll dude gets up bull hits him again [Music] and i'm like i'm out hello uh yesterday's 2022 rock cobbler bull ride i was that guy just wanted to give an explanation of my point of view um i was riding along some super tight technical single track charging up came to a y in the trail there was a large group of people uh i was rolling up to on the right and and just a handful on the left so i opted to go left i i did hear everybody yelling but i wasn't really paying attention to what they were saying i was kind of in my own world and everything looked good i rolled up over a hill saw the bull he was he was facing away kind of walking away from the trail and uh i got to say where i ride there's a lot of open ranges so it's normal to ride amongst cattle come within just a couple feet of them all the time and so i thought i'd just sneak on by um he spun around at the last minute knocked me down then kind of scooped me up and gave me a toss as you can see at the end of the clip i popped right up ran towards my bike picked it up remounted and rode off um actually had a great result um just wanted to put that out there hope you all had a good ride yourselves oh [Music] so in closing we're gonna rate the event and look everyone's different everyone's objectives are different and how they're gonna see an event is different so i try to do this really unbiased but i'll say flat out the course this was my favorite course i've ever raced in a gravel race it was so dynamic there was always something that was challenging but it wasn't too much anyone could complete this with the right mindset and pretty much on any bike whatever bike you brought it was the right bike at some turn now for the event i never thought about this before but parking was really good it was really amazing i get to like park like on the start finish line uh it was great now the food look i'm an annoying viggo so take it for a grain of salt but um it wasn't the best thing it's not it's not something that i would say that this event was known for uh with that being said i would say this is an 8.5 i would say it is a must do at least once it's it's very challenging um and it's very fun it's beautiful it's easy to get to i think across the board it's definitely something you should put on your calendar so anyways i appreciate you uh thanks for sticking around even though i haven't uploaded in a long time we'll move on to the next videos and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: The Vegan Cyclist

Views: 188,944

Keywords: vegan cyclist, vegan cycling, health and fitness, bicycle riding, road bikes, cycling, bike racing, cycling tips, the vegan cyclist, go pro cycling, cycling go pro, bike hacks, cycling racing, tips for cycling, vegan athlete, cycling videos, cycling workouts, sufferfest cycling

Id: YcOkL1O-MkI

Length: 30min 43sec (1843 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022