First gravel race – checked!

Last weekend I have started in my first race – 100k distance at Wiosenne Szutry Premium ("Springtime Premium Gravel"). I figured that as a rookie it is best to stick to a shorter route and an event that's close to home :).

I also decided not to do any special prep (beside a recon ride of the route), to see what my baseline performance is against people who start in those races – I wanted to have fun and not make it A Big Thing.

The event itself was pretty well organized, with nice Start/Finish amenities, and basic but tasty vegan food provided both at the pre-start event the day before and after finishing. Timing was done via GPS trackers and photo-finish.

The 100k route (which was also almost entirely a first half of the 200k route) was primarily a mix of embankments and forest fire roads, with ~30% of paved roads mixed in.
A rather flat parcours with 545m elevation gain, mostly in form of steeper, short climbs in the second half of the route. A few fast and loose descents ending with sharp corners required good control and anticipation – I definitely didn't ace the line on most of those and overshoot one, ending up having to scramble out of the overgrown and luckily shallow ditch on the outside.
There were a few sectors that betrayed the "premium" moniker, very bumpy and/or with some remnants of old cobblestones, as well as two or three technical, sandy stretches exacerbated by the dry weather we've had in recent weeks.

Speaking of weather, the morning start was chilly (4-5 deg. C) but sunny and getting warmer steadily, and most riders myself included opted for bib shorts. On top I had an "intermediate", warmer longsleeve and a gillet I took off around the middle of the race, but I probably would have been just fine with a regular jersey and sleeves, given the temperature reached 15-17 deg. C near the end.

I have started in a 5th or 6th wave, having assessed my intended pace as "moderate" (whatever the orgs meant by it ;)). I have pushed pretty hard from the beginning, trying to keep up with the fastest riders in my wave.
A 5-6 person group formed and we were riding quite closely together for almost 2/3 of the route, occasionally passing some of the slower riders from earlier waves. After the overshot turn I didn't manage to catch back up and was riding solo from then on.

I have decided to use the Power Guide data screen on my Garmin exclusively (with alerts if I went outside of desired cadence range), as I haven't really set any target pace etc, and rode basically "by feel", and mostly staying above guide-suggested avg power output.

I ended up with a ~27km/h average speed, 149W avg power, over 104km resulting in finish time 3h50min that placed me just inside the top 25% of 236 riders, which I am quite satisfied with, given I only really started riding more than commutes last autumn :).

It was also a good "baptism by fire" for a new bike, which performed admirably and with no mechanical issues beside a creaky seatpost (I definitely used too little carbon assembly paste), although exposing the fact that the stock saddle just doesn't suit me (whoever decided a no-cutout saddle is a good choice for a racing gravel bicycle should be condemned to ride it eternally).
40mm Caracal Race tires run at 2,3/2,4 bar proved enough grip in the rougher terrain and as fast as expected on smooth gravel and tarmac, although the bumpier sectors would definitely be much more comfortable and faster to go through on a trendy wide rubber at sub-2 bar ;).

TL;DR – a satisfying first ever gravel race start and an overall great experience that will probably lead to me starting in more races 🙂