Preparations for the Gravel Grinder are going quite well. With a little extra help from our friends at MTBVT, we have a few extra surprises in store for this year’s aid station (s?). We will be supplying snacks from some of Vermont’s finest snacky type food vendors, Cabot is on board with a sampling of the worlds most awesome cheese, and VT Smoke n’ Cure will be supplying meatstick and wait for it…. bacon. Yes, there will be bacon out on the course.
After the ride, you will be treated to a fantastic feast courtesy of Frida’s Taqueria. I still have yet to finalize the course, but I expect road conditions to be fantastic due to the speedy and early mud season. Spots are filling up, so be sure to get signed up!
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been asked “what sort of bike should I use for the Grinder?”. We will be riding on mixed surfaces, and there will be a fair amount of climbing, descending and pedaling. Narrows it down right? Well, there is one guy that has done every Grinder to date on a downhill bike, but he is special, because he often finishes among the faster riders on CX bikes. There will definitely be a lot of folks on singlespeeds.
But if there was a special type of bike for this type of ride, this would be it.
grinder ready
I just finished this build for a customer that wanted just such a beast. We opted for maximum versatility, with maximum comfort, so we went with the steel Niner SIR9, matching steel fork, and used Niner’s crabon seatpost and flat bar. Drivetrain is a 1×9 SRAM X9, and the speedy WTB Nano/Vulpine tire combo is mounted on an American Classic’s Terrain tubeless wheelset.
If you don’t have a bike, but want to do the Grinder, you should give a call at the shop. I’ll need about a week or so to build you something like this, but you’ll have it for many many miles!
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