I don’t have an opinion on gravel, but damn those are great pics. Looks like a great place to ride.
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Do you ever race gravel? I like riding gravel, but love racing it. For me, gravel racing has most of the good bits of road racing and marathon mtb racing mixed into a single discipline. Crit racing is fun because it’s often selective chaos, but I stopped doing it after one too many wrecks, trips to hospital, and pretty bad concussions/vertigo. Road racing is often a bore at the amateur level and it’s mostly dead. If we had the equivalent of classics racing where it’s a long race of attrition with selective sections, that would be fun, but I’m not aware of it in the US. In my opinion, gravel racing is basically classics racing on steroids. Many more selective sections, the surface makes attrition more acute, and pack dynamics are key. Not as fast as road racing, but plenty fast enough (over 20mph average for most amateur events and much higher for pros).
I imagine that people generally prefer the disciplines they are good at. For me, the only success I ever saw in road racing was when a small group or solo effort made it to the line in races of attrition. That’s was rare in amateur road racing, but it’s very common in amateur gravel racing.
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Yep, we’re the only US state that has more unpaved roads than paved roads. I did a quick Google to fact-check myself (it’s true), and saw this surprisingly decent summary of Vermont gravel riding.
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In addition to learning a lot about riding there, I also learned that the Maple Creemee isn’t just something Untapped brings to races. I totally thought it was their own product. (And it’s damn good too. As someone who doesn’t drink booze, it’s so nice to have something else to look forward to at the finish line)
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Yeah, they’re very much a real thing. It’s basically soft serve, but has a much higher butterfat content so it’s a lot richer. Plus you can get them with maple dust (i.e. rolled in maple sugar).
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Interestingly there is a photo of a rider walking, where as on a mtn bike they’d easily be riding that.
Every gravel event I’ve done has had a few people riding mountain bikes. They’re just not at the front of the race portion.
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Unlike the many other people who regularly ride sections like that on a gravel bike? Or the people with a mountain bike who would walk? It’s just bog standard Class IV. Some people walk, some people ride. 
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Yea, I get it that its the “spirit of gravel” to have an event and not a race (but still refer to it as a race on bike reg and on the website). Usually there is some charity associated, but my guess is that 95% of the money goes to keeping the dreams alive of some aspiring event organizer who wants figure out how to survive in Vermont and 5% goes to whatever charity is being used as headline, because its not exactly a 501C3 non profit doing the organizing. I would rather just make a $135 donation to the charity directly, go for my own ride with friends, and have beers after. If you spend $135 to enter a sprint triathlon you get 15 people doing water safety in kayaks, police at major intersections, perfectly timed splits, clear course routing for 3 different segments, awards and medals, and beers and lunch at the end. To me thats pretty different, and they usually have a charity named too. I guess thats why I feel a little violated by what I am seeing with these gravel “races”.
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My take on gravel riding and gravel bikes specifically is they ‘appear’ to (at face value anyway) to be very similar to the hard tail mountain bikes I owned and rode in the 1980s; albeit with drop handlebars and newer tech?
I enjoyed my 1980s riding experience with my Specialised rockhopper (had the sport as I couldn’t afford the comp 
).
Wasn’t as fast as my road bike but lots of fun riding fire roads and some single track in Snowdonia where I grew up, without the worry of cars. A bit of hike-a-bike got us to some brilliant hilltops and mountain tops where we could then downhill at perilous speed with hopeless cantilever brakes 
I guess if people derive a similar level of enjoyment from their more modern gravel bikes, then even if those bikes might by an empirical measure be the suboptimal choice for the terrain (given modern MTBs are amazing) I’d argue it doesn’t matter - so long as people are having fun riding bikes? 
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King of unpopular opinions among the snobs…
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Very true. I recall “run what ya brung” at Repack. Any bike goes down hill. It was the coaster brake that you had to worry about if you wanted to not bite the dust.
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I totally get this end of things. There are definitely a few events that seem to have no overhead, minimal support, and rolling starts so they don’t seem much like events at all. That said, it really would be more about lack of experience and not really understanding expectations than any kind of malfeasance.
These events are usually run by or with local non-profs, and there’s a pretty high level of personal accountability in these tiny towns when everyone sees what’s happening on a daily basis. Most of the towns running the events are usually around 1000 people or less, (sometimes nearly 1500!) so I think inexperience is by far the most likely reason for underwhelming events.
All that said, which event advertised itself as a race but wasn’t?
Not painless, but don’t usually draw blood the way studded flats do. I caught one of those and hope to never give blood like that ever again. It tore holes…
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At the shop I worked at, they would swap parts for people, especially gearing. If someone wanted x-gearing, they would swap out the new parts and offset some of the cost of the new parts with the existing ones. They would swap stems and seat posts too. Try to do that with a local bike shop now. Many look with a blank stare, or will sign you up for a ‘bike fitting’ (if you’re lucky it’s worth the money). Maybe there are some shops that would still do that. I don’t remember that shop charging people labor to do the work. I also remember some models of bikes that could be ordered with different parts, factory installed, but that was limited to the really expensive ones, obviously.
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I think I’m coming to the conclusion that the more bikes you have, the less time you spend using them. Having more bikes doesn’t buy you opportunity. It just takes up your time in maintaining them. Otherwise you would just make do with a slightly imperfect solution or a quick tire or wheel swap.
The less you ride, the more you buy. The more you buy, the less you ride.
There are now gravel bikes that are light and aerodynamic enough that anyone who isn’t a professional shouldn’t need a road bike. There are also cross country bikes that are now capable enough to race enduro on.
That doesn’t mean don’t enjoy nice things, I think it means have fewer nicer things that you actually use.
It could also apply to endlessly tweaking things. Sure, those new gravel tyres might save you 2.2w at 40kph on a certain gravel surface, but now you haven’t had 5 months of practice finding the limit of grip you’re 5 minutes slower down the descent so fuck your gains.
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I have been full time on a Crux for all conditions, other than trails with drops, for about a year. I admit I’m a little slower on the road now, but I don’t race and I don’t chase marginal gains, so I’ve reached the point where I just don’t care. I ride for fun and I ride to train. I’m in the process of selling everything but the Crux and a Down Country MTB. If I raced any more, I’m sure I’d feel differently.
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Doing the same. But also keeping an additional xc bike for training and to act as an emergency back-up. And really hard to let go of my Trail bike.
Ah crap. Nevermind. 
The cost and time of maintenance adds up quickly for reals though.
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An upside of TrainerRoad being so time efficient, is more hours to look after the fleet 
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I think I’ve fallen into this belief myself. I started with a road bike (Specialized Tarmac) that was my first purchase when I got into cycling and I kind of rushed into it (no bike fitting or even measuring really).
Then I got a gravel bike (Canyon GRZL) because I was going to do a gravel event. But in the process realized that the fit of the canyon (it’s slightly smaller) suits me MUCH better. So now, most of my riding is not gravel so I’ve ended up just putting smaller tires on the Canyon and it’s fine.
My speed probably is not maximized but like you said I’m not really too worried about that (I don’t race or anything like that).
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