7 Lessons That Made Me a Better Gravel Racer
2026 might have been my best year of racing ever. I lined up for 10 big races this season, the most I've ever done in a single year. I was fitter, I was more consistent, and I pulled off some of my best results in more than a decade of amateur racing.
That's a big deal for me, because bike racing is hard for regular riders. I have a full-time job and a family. I didn't come from an athletic background, and I don't think I have much natural talent. Getting faster took a lot of work, and a lot of mistakes. So I decided to record a message to my future self, outlining the seven most important things I've learned from this past season of racing. If I actually listen to myself, I'll keep improving. Hopefully you will too!
Lesson 1: Having a Plan Is Always Better Than Winging It
A solid race plan is the one thing that consistently improved my results this year. It doesn't have to be complicated. The most impactful piece of planning I do is setting a power window.
What's a power window?
A power window is a lower and upper limit for the power I'll try to hold during a race. Sometimes it's narrow, sometimes it's wide, and sometimes it only applies to certain sections or terrain. You need a power meter to use the power window method, but I'd argue a power meter is the most useful tool a cyclist can own. As long as you actually use it, it'll make a bigger difference than any aero upgrade, weight savings, or other marginal gain.
Setting a window and sticking to it from the gun keeps your pacing honest for the entire race. It also reduces how much thinking you have to do in the moment. I know exactly what I need to execute, and that removes a lot of stress and uncertainty on race day.
How I used power windows this year
At UNBOUND Gravel, I set a wide window of 170 to 270 watts. Within the first 10 miles, my group was going so hard I had to push over 300 watts to hang on. Because that was outside my window, I let them go. It turned out to be a great decision. I stayed fresher and more consistent for the remainder of the race (which took over 12 hours!) because I didn't leave my power window in the opening miles.
At Big Sugar Gravel, my last race of the season, I set a window of roughly 300 to 360 watts that only applied on climbs. Every time the road tipped up, I focused on staying in that range: hard enough to stick with people, but not so hard that I'd explode.
Power windows don't have to be strict. You'll naturally dip below and punch above them sometimes. It's okay to go over the top of the window, especially if it allows you to stick with a good group, but if I'm there for more than a few minutes, I pull the plug and let that group go.
How to choose your power window
This takes some experimentation, but generally, the longer the race, the lower and wider the window should be. For UNBOUND, my longest race of the season, the top end sits around the top of my tempo zone (Zone 3), and the bottom end sits at the very bottom of my endurance zone (Zone 2).
Plan the rest, too
A good plan goes beyond power:
- Fueling: My plan is always the same: a gel every 30 minutes, no matter what. (More on nutrition in a second.)
- Pre-race routine: I've settled into a consistent routine, which includes visiting the bathroom, listening to the same calming playlist, and two to three minutes of box breathing before every race. It has made a huge difference in my start-line nerves.
Lesson 2: Be Good to Your Gut (and Always Test Your Nutrition)
My best season ever was preceded by one of my worst. In 2025, several of my races were completely derailed by what I'll politely call port-a-potty detours. I dealt with nausea and gut distress, and I struggled to stay hydrated and fueled as a result.
Being macho about my stomach doesn't work. I have a baby gut. It's incredibly sensitive, and once it revolts, I don't come back.
The culprit: maltodextrin
I eventually narrowed my problems down to one ingredient: maltodextrin. When I take in a lot of it, my stomach turns on me, but usually only after two or three hours of riding. That's unfortunate, because maltodextrin is a main ingredient in a ton of gels and drink mixes.
It took me a while to figure out, because it wasn't a problem at first. Things got worse when I jumped on the high-carb bandwagon. I saw riders packing as much as 400 grams of carbs into a single bottle and thought it was genius. So I started loading my bottles with a couple hundred grams and smashing them early in races. I had some great performances, but then I had four races in a row where I completely imploded (or, more accurately, exploded) in the back half before I realized the drink mix was to blame.
I'm not saying don't use high-carb mixes. Plenty of people have no problems with them. The real lesson is this: test and prove out your nutrition products and strategy well before your target races.
What "testing" actually means
Testing doesn't mean trying a gel on a ride. It means hitting the quantity and frequency you plan to use on race day, during hard training rides, more than once. My coach has me do race simulation rides where the main goal is executing my 80 to 100 g/hr fueling plan while riding hard. That trains your gut, and it trains you to eat under duress, which you'll do a lot of on race day.
I spent the whole winter testing. Besides learning that maltodextrin was making me poop my bibs, here's what I found:
- "Eat trash, go fast" doesn't work for me. I love candy on long, chill endurance rides, but once the effort ramps up to race pace, I can't eat enough of it to hit my carb targets without feeling sick.
- Real food doesn't work for me either. Waffles, bars, dates, rice cakes: I can eat one or two, but over a long, hard ride, they all make me feel ill.
- Most carb mixes make me sick, and most of them contain maltodextrin.
- I need the plainest thing in the world: sugar. It's also cheap. I put straight sugar in my hydration pack. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll use Tailwind, the only drink mix I've found that my stomach can handle. For gels, my favorite is Maurten, which is unfortunate because they're about the most expensive gels in the world. This winter, I'm going to try making a homemade version. (Don't worry, I'll test it.)
Always carry plain water
I went through a phase where every bottle on my bike had some kind of mix in it. Never again. My strategy now is sugar in my hydration bladder and plain water in my bottles.
- If I'm feeling nauseous late in a long race, plain water is the most effective palate cleanser and reset I've found.
- When it's super hot, drinking more plain water and less mix reduces my gut distress.
- It's also great for spraying on yourself when you're overheating or covered in mud.
That's a strategy I'm carrying straight into 2027.
Lesson 3: Improve Your Group Riding Tactics
I can't get the results I want alone. Air resistance is the biggest obstacle to speed, so staying in a group is the best way to save energy and go faster. The one time I finished UNBOUND in under 12 hours, it was because I stuck with an absurdly fast group all the way to the end.
That's the dream scenario, but it's hard to pull off, because good groups are usually strong groups. Here are three tips that have helped me.
Tip 1: Dangling leads to death
When you're in a big blob that's churning like a washing machine, spend some energy making sure you don't drift too far back. The front half of a group is always easier than the back half. The accelerations and surges are less violent, and you get caught out by fewer gaps. Gaps are your worst enemy. Closing one sucks, and it burns energy you can't spare.
Tip 2: Your effort isn't over until you're back on the wheel
In a fast paceline, the hardest effort isn't your pull. It's the acceleration after you pull off, when you have to latch onto the last wheel and get back in the draft. When I was less experienced, that's exactly when I got spat out the back.
Now I pull off well before I start feeling tired. You shouldn't be doing long hero pulls anyway, unless you're just that much stronger than everyone else. That way I always have the oomph to get back on. The moment you're in the draft and can ease off the pedals without losing the wheel, that's when your effort is actually over.
Tip 3: Ten seconds can be the difference
This one applies when you're racing with (or more accurately, against) a fast, aggressive group where strong riders are trying to blow things up. Remember: if you're suffering, everyone's probably suffering. The riders who stay attached are the ones who can endure.
My biggest regret in any race is getting dropped when I still had something left in the tank. When I rewatch my race footage, I see it over and over. If I'd held on for another 10 seconds, sometimes even less, I would've made it over the crest and stayed with the group. Try to stick it out for 10 more seconds. It's going to hurt. But you might make it. I always regret not trying hard enough more than anything.
Lesson 4: Saying Things Out Loud Can Make Them Real
Announce your goals
Over the past two years, since I started filming my races, I've learned that announcing your goals is one of the most effective ways to actually achieve them. It creates accountability. It's scary, but filming and posting everything has changed everything for me. I don't quit as easily, because I know people (you!) are watching.
I know that's not for everyone, since most people have at least some degree of shame. But it doesn't have to be a camera. Tell your friends, your family, or a rando on an internet forum or Discord channel. Keeping your goals to yourself makes it easy to cheat yourself.
Be your own hype man
I've also learned that positive and negative self-talk can make or break a performance.
Take Gravel Worlds in Lincoln, Nebraska, one of my better races this year. My biggest regret came around mile 85, right after I got dropped from the front group. A rider caught me, and as I tried to sit on his wheel, I told him, "I'm not holding this." I got dropped immediately after.
I should've kept that to myself. Sure, I can think it. But the moment I said it out loud, I accepted it as true.
About 30 miles later, I did the opposite. I got gapped from a strong small group and decided to chase. This time, everything I said out loud was positive. It kept me on the gas, and I actually made it back on. That saved my race. Otherwise, I'd probably have been suffering alone in no man's land until the finish.
I've started doing it in hard workouts, too. I tell myself to hang on and keep pushing, and I finish reps that felt impossible when I started them.
So encourage yourself. Hype yourself up. Fake it 'til you make it. And do it out loud, because I truly believe saying it can help make it real.
Lesson 5: Big Tires Are Just Better
They just are. I'm a full-on big-tire believer now.
I don't care if they're heavier. I don't care if they feel slower (and feel can't be trusted). For me, every potential downside of a bigger, wider gravel or mountain bike tire is outweighed by the extra traction, comfort, and puncture protection.
Here's what that looked like this season:
- I didn't slide out once. I did crash a couple of times, but both were because I rode over something I shouldn't have. Never in a corner, never on a descent. I was always on rails when things got loose.
- I had supreme confidence on downhills and in corners. This is a huge advantage on any course that isn't pancake flat.
- I didn't flat once in a race. This has never happened to me before. Bigger tires are simply less flat-prone, and nothing is slower than a flat tire.
- My hands and wrists finally got a break. I've dealt with wrist and hand injuries for years, which is why I've run suspension forks on my gravel bikes for so long. Bigger tires made such a difference that I switched back to a rigid fork for the second half of the season.
My philosophy now is just run the widest tire your frame can fit, then just pick the right tread and casing for the course. Fortunately, both the Obed GVR and MMR can fit 2.2"+ MTB tires!
Lesson 6: Be a Goldfish. Keep Looking Forward. Keep Pedaling.
In racing, something always goes wrong. A dropped chain, a bike clogged with mud, a flat, a crash.
Or you just start hurting. In nearly every gravel race this year, I entered a dark, dark place. The kind where I'm thinking, "How the heck am I going to finish? I feel miserable. I want to quit." It happens to me all the time. In the past, it was easy for me to wallow in despair when something went wrong. But you have to remember, these moments almost always fade, as long as you keep pedaling.
One of the best things that happened to me this year was crashing in my very first race of the season, Mid South. My goals went out the window, but I decided to fight all the way to the finish anyway. That choice made it one of my most memorable races.
It's never over 'til it's over. In endurance racing, the beauty really is in the struggle.
And one failure isn't the end. I failed a lot this year. Progress is rarely a straight line up. It's up and down. A failure is just an invitation to keep improving and keep trying. As Ted Lasso says, "Be a goldfish." In the show, Ted tells a young player who's beating himself up over a mistake that the goldfish is the happiest animal on earth, because it has a 10-second memory. That's the mindset I want on race day: forget the mistake, think about the next moment, and keep going.
Lesson 7: Take a Moment to Look Around
Maybe I'm getting older and more sentimental, but this year I really appreciated the places these races took me. Some are stunning. Salida, Colorado, takes my breath away every time. But I was surprised by how much I loved the Midwestern races. I've always loved UNBOUND, but Mid South in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Gravel Worlds in Lincoln, Nebraska, have their own unique charm. They're little slices of Americana I never expected to enjoy, local restaurants included.
No offense to anyone who lives there, but some of these places are kind of in the middle of nowhere. Then I meet people at the race who say, "This is home." It reminds me that the middle of nowhere is still somewhere to someone.
So look up from your stem once in a while. Appreciate the privilege of being out there. And appreciate the people, too. My favorite part of every gravel race is meeting other riders.