Gravel Is My Bag, Child!

As I proceed to hunt the Elusive Spirit of Gravel, I’m happy to report I’ve now moved on to the inevitable “accessorizing” section of my journey. Bear in mind how again within the early a part of this century, on the peak of the fixie craze, you may acquire all method of u-lock holsters and coloured rims and high tube pads, permitting you to play Barbie with bikes?

Properly the identical factor goes in your broccoli bike, and taunted by all these empty accent mounts I’ve now acquired and put in…a small high tube bag:

At nighttime days earlier than the Gravel Revolution a high tube bag was often called a “bento field.” It was used solely by triathletes and was the very pinnacle of dorkiness. However now they’re apparently acceptable, and whereas my company bag could not have the cachet or gravel cred of a designer hobo bindle from Ultraromance that you simply connect to your Brooks saddle with a stick, it does bolt on to the bike:

Hey, you don’t develop into cool in a single day. You’ve bought to pay your dues first. And if which means using round trying like the principle character in a youngsters’s ebook referred to as My First Gravel Bike then I’m prepared to do what it takes:

That’s the AI’s tackle “a youngsters’s ebook referred to as My First Gravel Bike.” Not dangerous! Certain, there’s the standard mutant cockpit, however that’s a given at this level. Additionally, Niord Bt Galris Mgfleah is one in every of my favourite authors, although he’s finest loved within the unique Gaelic.

Anyway, this bag will enable me to hold a mini pump with out sticking it in my jersey, in addition to some foodstuffs for when it’s lastly heat sufficient to journey exterior for greater than two hours:

[“Two hours? Woosie.”]

I think the actual cause the entire gravel bike factor took off just isn’t for any of the explanations folks normally cite (folks don’t wish to journey on busy roads with numerous vehicles; folks need extra versatile bikes; folks can work remotely and dwell the desert hipster way of life…] however moderately as a result of roadie varieties are lastly allowed to place small luggage on their bikes.

Talking of gravel, Life Time Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LGH) -6,98777%, the corporate that owns all of the gravel, is formally banning drop bars from the Leadville Path 100:

However you’ll nonetheless be capable of use drop bars in races with the phrase “gravel” within the title:

Detailed in its up to date guidelines for its 2026 occasions, Life Time revealed that drop bars is not going to be allowed at each the Leadville Path 100 and Little Sugar mountain bike races this 12 months. The Chequamegon MTB Pageant occasion will nonetheless enable using drop bars, as will the Sea Otter Traditional Gravel, Unbound Gravel and Huge Sugar Gravel.

Now, I ought to make it clear that I don’t actually care if races have guidelines, nor do I care whether or not or not these guidelines make any sense. Races have guidelines, and that’s what makes them races and never rides. In the event you don’t like the foundations, then don’t enter the race. So if Life Time needs to ban drop bars, or singlespeeds, or pubic hair, or anything, that’s fairly actually their enterprise. Don’t prefer it? Discover one other race, or else you’d higher ebook that waxing appointment now to keep away from the pre-Unbound rush.

Nonetheless…why?

I did go to the foundations web page, and right here’s what they are saying:

“Course compatibility?” Isn’t that as much as the riders? Clearly drop bars have been appropriate with the course, in any other case no one would have used them. As for “security,” have been folks crashing as a result of they have been utilizing drop bars? I’m not asking sarcastically, I’m actually asking, as a result of I don’t know. And if the final word objective is to protect the integrity of Leadville as a mountain bike race or one thing, that doesn’t actually make sense, since folks have all the time raced mountain bikes with drop bars. [I don’t need to insert the Obligatory Tomac Photo here, do I? This isn’t the rest of the Internet, we’re all grownups here.]

After all, not everyone agrees:

I don’t know what’s funnier: placing drop bars on a mountain bike and promoting it as a gravel bike like Pinarello did, or claiming that doing so is someway harmful to the patron, like this text does:

Bike manufacturers then reply by constructing able to go conversions. You don’t should supply components; you simply should put down your bank card and also you get one thing that’s absolutely engineered. Besides is it? Is it really absolutely engineered?

What in case you are a small model that simply needs to capitalize on a pattern with out a lot funding. That may by no means occur in our small neighborhood, proper?

Received’t any individual consider the advertising victims?!?

Additionally, what’s Life Time saving folks from precisely?

Life Time is correct to kill this pattern within the racing neighborhood, however you also needs to be thanking them. This rule change will  prevent from bikes like this. The precise use case is extremely small and Leadville is on the heart of that. Banning the pattern there means you gained’t be seeing drop bar mountain bikes profitable races practically as usually. That may imply much less headlines about it and that may imply much less curiosity. Manufacturers gained’t want to reply.

Just like the “use case” (barf) for many different kinds of mountain bikes isn’t vanishingly small? In 2026 you want separate mountain bikes for using up hills and for using down them. Additionally, if the bikes are profitable races then doesn’t that imply…they’re working?

I assume the actual cause mountain bikers object to that is that placing totally different handlebars on a motorcycle for a selected course is a decidedly low-tech answer, and there’s nothing they hate greater than simplicity.