How A Person Finds Gravel Cycling.

How does a person "get into gravel"? A deeper look into the growth of gravel cycling.

To me it seems like there are a few main avenues for people to discover or enter the sport, and the majority of them are just other disciplines of cycling. But then, there's a good group of people out there that weren't into road or mountain, maybe have never really been around the race scene much but still ended up donning the lycra and getting out on some primo dirt with the 38mms or 42 or whatever you roll as long as you're rolling.

And that's what I want to find out, because it's easy to say "oh well it was a natural progression as an aging mountain biker" or, "well I did a lot of road cycling but I got tired of the city and wanted to get out in more nature."

But what about the folks that just saw Gravel Biking and said, "let's give it a shot." Having never been involved in cycling of any kind before that? I want to know about what made them say that. I'm going to attack this from a few different angles.

Gravel Rollers rolling through Birdsville on the Bird Dog course in November 2024.

#1. Google. I'm Gen-Z, unfortunately, but I've made it this far googling just about everything I need to know. It's going to be my best weapon for finding the information I'm looking for.

Here’s what the big G had to say about people’s humble gravel beginnings… When I use google to find how people are doing things or what people are saying, I usually end up on Reddit. But after wasting a few hours poking around in r/gravelcycling I went back to goog and adjusted my search terms a bit. That’s when I found this great article from Performancebike.com titled “A Brief History of Gravel Cycling.”

Once I had read up on a bit of Gristory, (Gravel History), I went back to my safespace, Reddit.

I made a reddit post on the Gravel Roll account yesterday asking the folks of r/gravelcycling to share how they got into the sport. I wasn’t expecting much of a response, maybe 3-4 comments within the first few days. What I got was mindblowing. Within 4 hours there were 70 comments from folks all over the country and outside it, explaining why or how they found gravel riding.

I’ve been spending the last couple days filtering through the comments made, stories told, and reasons shared. There does seem to be a general consensus around the two pathways I defined earlier, coming from MTB or from Road.

This is the stats of the reddit post I made as well as the top comment that was made. There ended up being 88 comments on this! Pretty insane! Never saw that level of engagement coming.

#2. Local Bike Shops, races, and community groups. I live in Boise, ID, which is how I met our Gravel Roll Guru, Rob Evans and ended up here. (Least chill guru I've ever met btw.) JK, love you Rob lol. We work with a local shop in town called George's Cycles. They have two locations, and there are also about 40+ locally owned bike shops here. I know, its INSANE. All over the country local bike shops are going out of business, but a new one seems to pop up every week here. I'm going to use my connections to interview people about their experience in gravel cycling and how they got involved.

Shot from the Bird Dog Long Course last year. Views like this are a big reason I think people get into Gravel Cycling.

After reading a lot of reddit comments, talking to shop employees and customers here is my theory of how non-cyclists become cyclists.

When non-cyclist first see us, they think, "look at the dorks in the tight pants." But after they see the places we go, the energy we have, and the happiness it grants us, they get curious. So they get a bike, maybe just a commuter, maybe an old ten speed. But they love the feeling of riding it. They start looking up places to ride their bike, woah, lots of cool places, but the best all seem to be on dirt roads. They think it would be nice to get out of the city and not worry about as many cars. See more trees, than buildings, more plants than concrete. More animals than people. ( I get it. ) But oh no, they need a bike that can handle those dirt roads. They do some research, read some reviews, seems like the type of riding they want to do would be best served with a Gravel Bike. They get it. They ride 20 miles for the first time. They've never felt like this before, but also. their butt hurts. They look up why, saddle sore? They look up a solution, padded bib. Then they ride 40 miles, got a weird rash from their t-shirt. Looks up the solution, lycra jersey. It's tight.. but it looks... Really good. All of a sudden those dorks are badasses. They talk to some other cyclists, learn about races. They're not sure, they've never been that competitive and they just like to ride for fun. They learn that there's a lot of races out there that are all about the fun of riding, they offer shorter distances, timed segments and prizes for everyone. And now, that person is one of us.

I want to know how you Gravel Rollers got into the cult of dirt riding originally.

If you want to / are willing to share your Gravel Origin Story, submit the form at the end of the blog post and I'll reach out to you in the coming days about writing a post and newsletter that highlights your story!