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my first Gravel podium.
There’s always a degree of nerves going into the first race of the year. There’s that big question mark as to whether all of the work you’ve put in has been worth it.
Up until your first race day of the year, you’ve been racing your power meter, now it’s time to see where you stack up against everyone else.
It’s been my best winter ever.
I’ve invested in myself more than ever before - physically and financially. From working with a nutritionist to get my body comp right and a skills coach to help get my gravel skills up to where they need to be.
On top of all that, I’ve been out training with Riley Pickrell which is an investment in itself - check out that guy’s Strava from November-December.
I was quietly confident going into that first race. My power tests from the week before showed that I was hitting the highest numbers I’ve ever done, while being a couple of kilos lighter too - but you never really know.
The Santa Vall is the first big gravel race of the year in Europe. Starting in Girona and organised by Klassmark, it attracts some of the best names in the gravel scene. It has an unusual format:
Stage 1: Mass start hill climb prologue (6.3km, 400m elevation)
Stage 2: Timed segments (72.6km - 2x20kmish segments)
Stage 3: 116km Race
Stage 1:
“A mass start hill climb prologue?”, I hear you ask. Yup, it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.
Imagine starting the Tour de France a kilometre from the bottom of Alpe d’Huez and then dropping the flag. Now, I’m not comparing Santa Vall to the Tour, but you get my point.
It was carnage. A kilometre of flat meant that the elbows had to be sharp to ensure a good position into the climb. I burned a match moving up on the outside, it’s better to start the climb in a good position than fresh and mid-pack.
It’s a good decision, and I enter the foot of the narrow climb in tenth or so wheel.
“Right, who’s going to take this up”, I think to myself.
It was a stacked field. There were multiple former World Tour and Pro Conti riders who’ve won at the top of the sport. Classics winners, Grand Tour stage winners. Add in the pro-MTBers to boot, those guys are better at twenty-minute efforts than anybody I know.
An optimistic attack sails on the left hand side. It was too fast, too soon. He was never going to keep it up and everybody knew it, he came back as quickly as he shot off the front.
My head’s on a swivel. I know the guys I want to keep an eye on, but the beauty of Gravel is that you never really know who’s who. There is always a hidden gem in the field.
One of the mountain bikers attack, I follow. We stall.
The climb finishes up a wall. If you go too early you’re guaranteed to blow up. But, for a rider like me it’s the only option. I’m not going to beat these guys in a punchy one-minute race to the line, I’ve got to throw the Hail Mary.
I attack off the front, and I’m in a flow state. It’s probably the best I’ve ever felt in a race. My body reacts to everything, at that moment I feel like I can ride away from anyone in the world.
I have a gap. I check my shoulder and press on. I’m riding on feel. I keep looking down on my power meter but it’s either over reading or I’m on the best ride of my life. The number on my power meter implied I should slow down or risk blowing up. I risked blowing up.
I round the last corner and it’s the steepest of finales. It’s rutty, it’s rocky, it’s slow. I’m staying strong.
Click, click. I hear the gears behind me.
With some 250m to go and Petr Vakoc, a man who spent almost a decade on the World Tour with Quickstep, and then Alpecin, comes past me. He’s a classy bike rider, hell he’s won a lot of proper bike races. But, it hurts to see him come by.
I go into consolidation mode and finish six-seconds behind Vakoc, some ten-seconds ahead of third. I didn’t blow up, Vakoc just did a phenomenal ride. I paced it to perfection.
A lot of people are shocked to see me that far up, maybe myself included. It’s my best 10-minute power of all time, I’m flying. (File: https://www.strava.com/activities/10774346167)
It may only be the Santa Vall, but the prologue showed what I’m capable of doing. Pedalling back to my apartment, I’m happy. I haven’t had a ride like that in years.
That’s what I can do when everything’s going well. That’s what I’m capable of. That’s my level.
Stage 2:
The second stage was always going to be the true test. While the prologue was a good ride, and a good result too. It wasn’t a true gravel race, it was effectively a watts per kilo test. It provided little to no skill and didn’t show me if the work on my skills over winter had been worth it.
Timed sectors are a strange race format. Every rolls out together, but we’re rolling at recovery ride speed, the first timed sector not starting until 20km in.
I throw in a half fake attack, people follow. Then it all calms down again until the race to the sector.
We get to the start point and it’s carnage. Some people attack early, other’s track stand before the start line and then attempt to chase on to effectively get a lower time. It’s tactics galore.
There’s a big crash as a rider in the break takes a corner too hot - luckily he’s the only one down. A small group has emerged out front and I bridge across. It neutralises it. Another attack goes, team tactics occur as some attempt to block before another move goes. I make the move, I push on, a few kilometres later we get caught.
It’s bike racing in it’s purest format. A bunch of guys just kicking the living daylights out of each other. You’re only racing for 20km in the timed segments so you can go deep, you can go full. It’s the most hectic style of racing I’ve seen in a while, but I love it.
I still feel on Cloud Nine. I’m riding well, not as well as the night before but well enough. I can react to the top guys, I can go over the top. Mega.
I finish the first timed sector somewhere in the Top 15. The second was a bit less to plan. I make the front split on the technicaly descent - I was as surprised as you are - but then a stupid mistake and a poor bit of descending after that puts me in no-man’s land.
I’m in a small group, we miss a right-hander. Not game over, but I lose a bit of time overall, finishing in the second group of the day and just inside the Top 15. I’m happy, GC is still a go.
Stage 3:
Yawn. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.
The final stage is the biggie, and finally a proper bike race. The first half is technical. It’s left, it’s right, it’s up, and it’s down. It’s single track, it’s constantly single file. It’s a cracking course but it’s hell.
My plan for the day is to try and force a move on the main climb of the day: Els Angels. It’s a climb I know well, it’s one I regularly throw into a training ride. It’s not the typical way up Els if you’ve ever visited Girona to ride on the road, but the gravelly back side which is stupidly steep.
The plan is simple. Get to the bottom of Els safe, launch with the same legs I had on Friday night and see what happens at the top.
If only it was that simple.
I can’t stop yawning on the start line.. [Ed. Funny, as soon as I wrote the word yawn, I yawned.]
I feel fine, I’ve got a load of caffeine in my system but I’m on overdrive for yawning. Weird, but we crack on.
The start is scrappy, but I hold an okay position. The second we go onto the trails I feel in trouble. My unbeatable mindset has gone and suddenly I’m in the washing machine. All I can do is look further up the road to the front of the group where I’d been hanging the last couple of days.
My mind goes into overdrive. Did I eat enough last night? Am I coming down with something?
The course takes us over the grippiest of roads in the first 45-minutes. They’re roads I know like the back of my hand and that does me good, but I’m still suffering like a dog. It goes uphill and I step out of the group to move up to get position, but I can’t go anywhere. Wait, am I getting dropped?
Now, I’ve been dropped A LOT in my career. I’m as experienced in riding gruppetto as I am attacking off the front of the race. However, I’ve never gone from attacking off the front to feeling this bad in the space of thirty-six hours.
At the top of the first main climb, not even an hour, the group has thinned to fifty or so. I’m sitting last wheel, clawing on for dear life. It feels like an if, not when am I going to go pop. There’s hope that I’m going to come round, but my plan of attacking up Els gets less and less optimistic with each pedal stroke.
There’s a big fight in the single track to start the most important part of the race. I go bang and get dropped.
A quick descent to the bottom of Els I then try to ride a solid pace up it. Nothing’s there. Even writing this two weeks later I’m surprised by how empty I was. I can’t even pedal at threshold.
I’m dropped. I’m in group who knows what.
I planned to attack at the bottom of Els, the reality is, I wasn’t even in the same postcode of the front group at the bottom of Els.
The rest of the race went in a blur. I did ‘ride into it’ a little, but was happy to see the finish line and get home.
While we still don’t know exactly what happened that day, in hindsight I'm happy it did.
In my first race of the year, I had an almost perfect stage, a good stage and an awful stage too. For planning the rest of the season it was great. It’s true when they say you learn more from failure than success.
The Santa Vall was a great first marker. Next up is, my first US Block of the year:
The Mid South - Oklahoma
Rattlesnake - Texas
BWR Utah - Cedar City
Redlands - California
Project TAG, proudly partnering (both for my athletic and influencing ability) with…
While you’re here…
I’ve added both paid subscription and a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link to this post. As the year progresses, I’m planning on building this blog and putting out articles which I’ve always wanted to write but for whatever reason, haven’t wanted to pitch.
Any money that I make from either my Substack, or BMaC link will go straight back into supporting my 2024 racing project. I am planning on keeping all content on here free to view though.
Well written. You should consider working for escape collective as your style of writing matches their high quality journalism!
Keep on digging, Joe 🤟🏻