Can a beginner off-road rider complete Big Sugar Gravel?

Cycling is all about challenging yourself. It could be conquering your first 20-mile ride, 50 miles or even a century. Having mastered the tarmac, GCN’s Alex Paton and his wife Chloe decided that their next challenge should be off-road, so they entered the 100-mile Big Sugar Gravel race in Arkansas, USA.

While Alex is no stranger to off-road riding, Chloe is more accustomed to smooth tarmac and would be dipping her toes into the world of gravel for the first time. She’d be diving in at the deep end, taking on one of the toughest races in America. Packed with challenging sections of off-road riding and plenty of climbs, it’s a race that pushes riders to the limits.

Read more: We got coached by AI and this is what happened

Expecting Chloe to just turn up would have been unfair, so we recruited the help of training platform Humango to prepare her for the event. Nowadays there are plenty of training platforms available that give cyclists everything they need, from specific plans and workouts, to the tools they need to create these. Most of these are driven by human input and creation, but Humango does things a little differently through an AI-based platform.

At the centre of this is Hugo, a virtual training assistant which constantly analyses data and “translates each new data point from across your performance, scheduling, preferences, and feedback into actionable insights and real-time adjustments to your prescribed workouts”.

A rider changes on a daily basis, so Humango’s training plans are designed to reflect this.

Alongside physical preparation, bike choice for gravel riding is critical. Gravel courses throw up so many different challenges from race to race, leading to widely different set-ups.

To help give them the best chance possible, we equipped Chloe and Alex with the Lauf Seigla, a pure gravel specialist bike. Every gram of the bike encompasses the gravel spirit, none more so than the unique Grit fork. Lauf’s solution to taming rough terrain, it provides 30mm of travel which not only improves comfort, but also added traction too.

That bike was paired with the Forge+Bond 25 GR wheelset. While these pack plenty of impressive features, it’s not the performance of the wheels that caught our attention. Instead, it’s the company’s sustainable philosophy which has been weaved into the carbon construction, ensuring they’re 100% recyclable.

Check out the full bike and wheel set-up: Lauf Seigla with Forge+Bond wheels: Big Sugar Gravel bike check

That’s the training and equipment taken care of, but would it be enough for Alex and Chloe to conquer the mighty Big Sugar Gravel?

Watch the full video at the top of the page to find out.