 Today I'll be taking you through my gravel race bike setup. I'll be talking about wheel and tire choice, what power meter I use and recommend, gearing setup, cockpit setup, and some other crucial gravel upgrades that will have a huge impact on your speed and performance. Welcome back to another video, my name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach and ultra endurance gravel and mountain bike racer. Today I'll be taking you through my gravel race bike setup. I just got this bike last week and it's the bike that I'll be using in the upcoming 2020 gravel race season. We'll start with the frame and fork, which is Niners RLT9 RDO. This carbon fiber frame is purposefully made for gravel with longer chainstays, a lower bottom bracket, and a slacker head tube for more stability at speed. It also has mounts for just about everything so you can easily carry bike bags, extra water bottles, fenders, racks, et cetera. I actually have used the bottle cage mounts on the side of the fork if it's really hot and I'm riding somewhere where there aren't a lot of places to fill up, but most of the time I don't use all these mounts so I remove the bolts and cover the holes with a small bit of electrical tape. I'm five foot 10 and in this model I ride a 56 centimeter frame and the bike fits me extremely well, meaning that even after hours of riding or racing, I'm still comfortable on it. This is definitely something that you need to take into consideration when picking out an endurance gravel race bike. I've done Dirty Kanza and other all day gravel events on this frame and it's the bike that I do the majority of my training on and it's never my back, neck, or knees that fail me, it's usually my legs. Or I bonk and have to take food from a farmer in the middle of nowhere but you can watch my DK recap video if you wanna hear about that. The point is when it comes to endurance gravel racing, comfortable is fast. Improper fit can lead to mild problems like minor aches and pains over the course of a long ride to more severe ones like overuse injury. So it's important that you have your fit dialed on any bike that you ride, but especially one that you're gonna be spending all day on. On a related note, let's talk about the cockpit. I've got a 100 millimeter negative six degree Envy stem set as low as it can go. For bars, I've got Envy's road handlebars with roadtogs in the drops to improve comfort in the drops over long races. I actually try to spend as much time as I can in the drops while racing even while drafting to improve aerodynamics. This is of course, if I'm not in the aero bars but I'll get to that in a minute. The compact drop bar and tog setup helps to make this a little bit more comfortable. The difference in speed between being able to ride in the drops versus having to stay up on the hoods can be pretty significant. For a rough example, here on bikecalculator.com I've plugged in riding 200 miles in the drops versus 200 miles in the hoods. And the difference is over 43 minutes. I picked 200 miles to estimate the savings at Dirty Kanza. Now, obviously you can't ride all of DK in the drops, but I did this to illustrate just how crucial this can be. I also use a relatively narrow 40 centimeter handlebar. Gravel handlebars tend to be a little bit wider than road handlebars and are sometimes even flared out at the drops. This is great if your goal is comfort and control but I've actually gone in the opposite direction opting for narrower bars to further improve aerodynamics. All right guys, the time has come. It's time to talk about aero bars. Look guys, I know this kid is a complete heathen. I tell him that all the time. Jeff Kabush, if you're watching, shield your eyes. I'll tell you when it's okay to look. If you watch a lot of my videos you've probably heard me talk about aero bars before and that's because for flatter gravel courses there's no single upgrade that you could make that'll improve your performance more. Research on aerodynamics and cycling using wind tunnel testing has shown that the TT position can produce a drag reduction on the order of 20%. Let's head back to bikecalculator.com to show you what that looks like in terms of time savings. Remember when I told you that you can save 43 minutes going from the hoods to the drops over 200 mile course? Well, you can save another 39 minutes by going from the drops to the aero bars. That's an hour and 22 minutes of savings going from the hoods to the aero bars. Now you definitely cannot do all of cans in the aero bars. There are gonna be times where you're climbing or descending or in a group where you have to have your hands on the hoods or the drops. That being said, you could probably reasonably do a fourth of cans in the aero bars and that's still 20 minutes of savings. Of course, these are just rough calculations and real world results may vary but the point is aero bars are not a marginal gain. The advantage that they give you is measured in minutes, not seconds. And the fact that aero bars are so hotly debated in the gravel world right now kind of blows my mind. This is how I see it. Aero bars for gravel racing are kind of like drop or seat posts for cross country mountain bike racing. It's technology borrowed from a different discipline of the sport that for a small weight penalty could have a big impact on your performance and traditionalists are gonna hate. I use the NV clip on extensions which are nice because you can adjust the pad position and reach of the bars. If you're gonna be spending a lot of time in the aero position, you want your aero bars to be set up right. A question that I've gotten asked about running aero bars for gravel is should you change your saddle position when you put aero bars on your bike? This is a good question because most of the time your saddle position on a time trial bike will be different than your saddle position on a road bike. However, you don't wanna change your position when you put aero bars on your gravel bike because you'll still be spending the majority of your time on the hoods or in the drops so that position should take priority. Instead, set up your aero bars so that they're comfortable in your normal position. All right, Jeff, I think he's done. It's safe to start watching again. For my saddle setup, I've got a specialized S-Works Phenom saddle with an NVC post. Obviously comfort is important for any bike saddle but especially for long gravel racing because you're gonna be sitting in that thing all day. The Phenom saddle in combination with Starlight Apparel's Black Bibs is probably the most comfortable saddle and bib setup that I've ever used. I can ride all day without discomfort or chafing. That being said, saddles are very personal and what works for me might not work for you and finding the right saddle requires experimentation. For the drivetrain and brakes, I use Shimano GRX 800 which is Shimano's gravel specific groupset. This is my first year riding GRX and I have to say I'm really impressed with it. Coming from mountain biking, I like that the rear derailleur comes with a clutch although most of the time I have the clutch disengaged unless I'm riding some really rough terrain. The ridges on the hoods and the larger brake levers is a great touch as well to keep your hands from slipping. For gearing, I run an 11 to 34 tooth Ultegra 11 speed cassette and a SRAM 50 tooth big ring and 34 tooth small ring. I may step this up to a 52 36 though. For most gravel races, I don't find myself running out of gears on the low end but I do occasionally run out of gears on the high end. This is also why I prefer a two-by as opposed to a one-by setup for gravel racing. More range of gears and less cross chaining. The Crank is a Quark D0 SRAM red power meter. People often ask me what power meter I recommend and my answer is always Quark and I'm not sponsored by them. They're a little more expensive than some of the other options on the market but it's well worth it for consistently reliable and accurate power readings. Having a power meter on your endurance gravel race bike is extremely important because of how important pacing is for these races. I constantly find myself looking down at my power to make sure that I'm staying within my limits. The more you ride with a power meter while racing, the better idea you get of what is and isn't manageable. For example, if you're doing a hundred plus miles and you have to ride at your FTP just to stay with the group that you're in, you might think about backing off and catching the next group. The majority of people go way too hard at the start of these races and then pay for it later and a power meter and a heart rate monitor can keep you from doing that if you know how to use them. To record all of this data, I use a Wahoo Element Bolt and I set my screen to display power, heart rate, time, and distance. I save the other metrics for post-race analysis. Pedals will change depending on the race, but I do often run road pedals and my go-to is Shimano. On here, I've got Shimano Durace. I will run mountain bike pedals sometimes though and when I do that, I usually go with Shimano XTRs or if I'm trying to be a real weight weenie, Crank Brothers Eggbeater 11s. My lightest pedal shoe combo is the Crank Brothers pedals with the three-hole adapter cleats so that I can run road shoes. I sometimes run this setup for mountain bike racing as well and it can add up to almost a pound of savings over an equivalent mountain bike shoe with XTR pedals. For water bottle cages, I use the King Cage Titanium Cage. They're super lightweight and do the job. You won't lose bottles with these. Let's now get into the wheel and tire setup. When somebody asked me, what should I spend my money on to upgrade my bike? Well, the first thing I tell them is you should get a power meter. If you don't have that, you should get that so you can train properly, but after that, it's wheels. For wheels, I use the Envy SES 3.4 AR discs. These wheels are pretty wide for road slash gravel wheels with a 25 millimeter internal width and 32 millimeter outer width and that's because they're designed to be used with wider tires. The aerodynamics of a rim can be greatly affected by what size tire you run and these wheels are aerodynamically optimized for 28 to 32 millimeter tires. The rims are laced to Envy hubs and the wheels weigh just over 1400 grams. If you watch my Sugar Cane 200 video, you know that I've been using the Specialized Pathfinder Pros. I'm very impressed with this tire. It feels as fast on the road as a normal road tire since it has no tread in the center, but it's still corners on gravel well since it has tread on the sides. For Sugar Cane, I ran 38s, but I may go with the 42 millimeter version of the tire depending on the course. At my first Dirty Canza, I ran 38 millimeter Schwalbe G1s and I probably won't do that again. I'll want something a bit wider. Inside the tire is where the real magic is though. I've been experimenting with tubeless tire inserts and they might just be a game-changing product. Running low tire pressure is a huge advantage for gravel riding. Your average 70 kilogram rider might want to run a PSI as low as the mid-30s for optimal performance. The caveat is that you're increasing your risk of flatting. This is where the tire inserts come in. You can run low pressure without the risk of pinching, which of course also protects your rim. I've been using the Tubolite insert which only adds about 23 grams. This is the big advantage that I see with Tubolite because their products are significantly lighter than their competitors, which typically add between 100 to 200 grams. Again, this is not a company that I'm sponsored by. I just really like the product and I think that it has huge potential for gravel. Yeah, that's great and all, but can we talk about how you finally cut your steer tube to an appropriate height? Maybe Durian Rider will finally leave us alone. That's my 2020 gravel race bike setup. If you follow me on Instagram, you already got a sneak peek of this bike. That's the best place to follow me for updates on my racing. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. 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