Interesting read from the folks at Outside Magazine about gravel riding. I feel us Iowans have known this for years...
Written by Joe Linsday here.
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Even if you're not into groad, the trend is probably improving your cycling experience
Gravel riding is the hot item in cycling right now. Races like Big Sugar and SBT GRVL are selling out in minutes, and companies are scrambling to introduce new products for the category. The niche has actually been around for over a decade (and much longerif you use a broad definition of riding drop-bar bikes off pavement), but only recently has it started to be a thing.Why? In a word: equipment.
Gravel gear as a category is just a baby. One of the first production gravel-race bikes, Salsa’s Warbird, is only eight years old. The races that created it, midwestern farm- and forest-road rambles like the Dirty Kanza, Trans Iowa, and Almanzo 100, date back to the mid-2000s. The fact that road and even cyclocross bikes weren’t really up to terrain challenges, like Trans Iowa’s peanut-butter mud or the Kanza’s tire-shredding Flint Hills, led Salsa to create the Warbird.
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