From race bikes to brakeless fixies – Mid South Gravel tech

The Mid South Gravel Endurance Festival is America’s premier spring gravel race that takes place in March over the rich red dirt roads of Stillwater, Oklahoma.

While the event is getting faster every year, with more pros coming from all across the country and around the world to experience American gravel, the event is so much more than its pointy end.

• Read more: Top 10 must-do US gravel races in 2024

The race is instead a beacon for every cyclist, regardless of what bike you prefer, to come and join the party, complete with ample amounts of cycling, music, beer and food. It is a celebration of cycling first and a race second. That eclectic mix of ingredients that make the Mid South creates one of the most diverse sets of tech choices of any mass start event in the United States.

Read more:

• The complete US gravel calendar
• 8 hidden gems of US gravel
• GCN's gravel hub

GCN were there at the pre-race expo on Friday to soak in all that the race had to offer, and eye up some special bikes. These were three builds we found that caught our eyes for three very different reasons.

Allied Echo – Payson McElveen, last year’s winner

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Payson McElveen's one-off Allied Echo with mud from pre riding given it some extra authenticity

At the expo, one of the most striking builds was that of last year’s overall winner Payson McElveen.

For the 2024 edition of the Mid South, McElveen rode the Allied Echo with a custom paint scheme, Zipp 303 wheels, 40mm Maxxis Reaver tyres and a SRAM Eagle 'mullet' 1x drive chain that is popular amongst the US professional gravel peloton, with a large 48-tooth chainring and an 11-50 cassette. While a 48-tooth ring is large for gravel, it was not the largest at the event as some riders opted for an even bigger 50-tooth option, pushing the boundaries of chainring clearance on a gravel bike.

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McElveen is pivoting more towards a 1x setup on gravel this year which is made possible using SRAM's Eagle rear mech and a big front chain ring

McElveen’s bike provider Allied, a bike brand based out of northwest Arkansas, has two gravel offerings with the Echo and the Able framesets. The Echo that McEvleen chose is the more aggressive of the two builds, with the Red Bull rider expecting the more aggressive bike would be the right fit for the fast race to come. Ultimately, the fast race did materialise with the winner averaging a whopping 22.64 mph on a course that was almost entirely run on dirt roads.

• Read more: Gravel vs road: how much slower is a gravel bike?

“I am rolling the dice a tiny bit and running my Echo that will only fit 40mm tyres, so a bit lower on the volume,” McElveen told GCN. “It's the classic gravel thing where there are parts where it is an advantage and parts where I’ll have to be a bit more careful. I’ve ridden this race four times – this will be my fifth – so I feel pretty familiar with the terrain.

“Last year I ran a full slick, but this year I have a file tread with a bit of a side knob.”

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Zipp 303 and 40mm Maxxis Reavers create the stable platform for McElveen's race machine

In the race, even with the speed of the day, the aggressive bike choice did catch up to McElveen with a puncture in the last 15km costing him a shot at the win as he was sitting in the final leading group of seven. Nevertheless, McElveen even hinted at what could have been trepidation around the set-up before the race began. When talking about tyre size, McElveen revealed a fairly significant change in thinking from previous years of gravel racing:

“I’m gradually moving towards wider tyres, in general, I could see this actually being the last race I run 40 [mm width tyres] this year. Officially it’s TBD, but I’m going bigger compared to years past.”

While we did not survey the pro field at Mid South, it is clear that amongst the fastest gravel racers, tyres are getting bigger and bigger every year. Mid South, with its relatively tame gravel, used to be a race where riders routinely rode tyres in the 36-38mm range. Now, the conventional wisdom has shifted to where most of the fastest riders seem to be on 42-45mm tyres.

Skream Ranger Fixie – Jacob Keen

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Brakeless fixies are celebrated for their simplicity. This particular fixie, however, has a few tricks up its sleeve

Away from the optimised set-up of the front of the peloton, the tech specs get unique quickly for the rest of the bunch. Of all the builds we saw in Oklahoma, the Skream fixed-gear bike piloted by Jacob Keen took the cake as the most audacious we spotted.

Keen, who resides in New York City and works as a lighting technician on film sets, was set to take the race on with a brakeless fixed-gear gravel bike with a Rudy Rock Shock gravel suspension fork, a 650b front wheel to offer more traction and suspension, a 700c rear to maximize the ability for the bike to skid to slow down and a dropper post to get the seat out of the way as Keen has to use his rear wheel to slow down instead of any type of brakes.

While this is the first time Keen made it to Mid South, the fixed-gear rider had already done the 100-mile Rule of Three gravel race in Arkansas brakeless. That race was even more daunting for a brakeless fixie as it had 4,000 more feet of climbing and many miles of technical singletrack trail Keen had to navigate with one gear, no coasting and no brakes.

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Details galore on Keen's Skream including a chainring with intricate cut-outs and a glorious green and white paint scheme

When it comes to why Keen rides these events fixed and brakeless, the answer is simple: “It's for steez, you know, to look cool."

When it comes down to it, however, Keen has made some very interesting choices which riders with brakes and gears could also learn from and possibly incorporate into their own technical arsenal. Most notably, Keen’s choice to mix and match the higher volume 650b wheel on the front with the bigger 700c wheel on the rear.

Essentially, the benefits of this mix-and-match are the same as front suspension on a gravel bike. With a 650b wheel and tyre, a rider can have effectively the same tyre diameter as a 700c wheel and tyre with much more volume, giving the rider the ability to run lower pressure in the front and benefit from more compliance within the complete system while retaining the rolling resistance benefits and power transfer of a mid-sized 700c tyre on the rear.

For those riders who are more technically adept, that lower volume rear tyre can be effectively used as a drifting device, letting the rider swing the rear of their bike around while their traction is preserved with the bigger, more treaded tyre on the front. While this does take more skill, on loose sandy terrain, this is a fast way to navigate tight turns and twisty terrain that is often found on gravel courses in the United States.

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The closer you look, the more the bike reveals, with a dropper post and a seat-clamp with the New York City skyline providing yet another creative flourish

Then again, it probably wouldn’t hurt for Keen to run a larger rear tyre if he could, with the margin for error lower on a bike without brakes.

“You get a lot more traction with a bigger front tyre. I wish I could run a bit of a bigger tyre in the back but it’s already almost rubbing.”

At the end of the day, however, Keen’s “tracklocross” frame is only capable of fitting 40mm tyres so the mullet is good enough for the 100-miles of rutted gravel roads, short downhills and constant challenges of the Mid South course.

Oh, and if you were wondering how Keen made it around, via his Instagram it seems as if things went well enough to finish in one piece:

Wilde Bicycle Co. Earth Ship Titanium single-speed – Eric Trejo

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Trejo and his Wilde single-speed, with a cameo from a classic camper-van that belongs to Bobby Wintle, the Mid South race director

Of course, the brakeless fixed gear is an exception to the rule at any gravel race, but Mid South Gravel is a haven for single-speed gravel bikes. While there were many to choose from, this particular single-speed build is reminiscent of many of the builds from the many of the riders who were focused on enjoyment over speed in the Mid South field.

Wilde is a bike company founded in the heart of the United States in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The bike brand specialises in handmade metal frames with standard and custom geometry offerings for their drop-bar and flat-bar offerings and most of the offerings are on the more affordable end of the boutique bike spectrum. The bike company has a clear affinity for the Mid South gravel as the race director, Bobby Wintle, was given two be-spoke offerings from Wilde last year at the event.

This particular model is the Earth Ship Titanium offering piloted by Eric Trejo from Topeka, Kansas. Trejo is a regular at Mid South, as his shirt from a previous edition demonstrates proudly. Nevertheless, 2024 was his year to try something new with his heart set on a long date with one special gear.

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Chain tension is an important element for any gravel single speed bike since a dropped chain is a trick to fix out on the road

“I didn’t think it was going to be a dry year, I thought to myself there was no way there was going to be three years of mud-free racing,” Trejo said of his choice to run one gear for his 50-mile race. “I have never raced single-speed here so I just thought I’d commit to it!

Mid South is a race with two distinct personalities. When the race is dry, it is one of the fastest courses in US gravel racing. If it is wet, it quickly becomes one of the slowest as all the roads turn to deep, sticky muck.

The previous two editions had been dry, so conventional wisdom suggested that with Oklahoma’s notoriously fickle March weather, the fate of the race was set to turn sloppy. When it turns sloppy, a single speed is often the only way one can guarantee that their bike will make it through the whole course as the red mud of a wet Mid South is not kind to derailleurs.

Beyond the one gear, Eric Trejo’s set-up was complete with a front Pizza rack, flat pedals that he said he was going to swap for some mountain bike pedals before the race, a handlebar bag and some plush Rene Herse 48mm Juniper Ridge tyres strapped onto a couple of 650b wheels. While it is a far cry from the build that Payson McElveen rode for his race, Trejo’s build is just as optimised for his goals for the day: “I want to have fun and lift everyone’s spirits!”

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While Trejo's is not exactly optimised for aerodynamics, it is certainly optimized for things like snacks and extra clothing which he hopes will make his ride smooth from start to finish

While these three builds offer a glimpse at the tech of Mid South, it is only a sample of what is on offer on the red dirt roads of Oklahoma. At the race, single speeds, fixies and premium race bikes are joined by mountain bikes, tandems, fat bikes and everything in between as the wacky, weird and wonderful are all celebrated at one of America’s biggest bike parties.

Did you make it to Mid South and did you spy or ride something exciting? Let us know in the comments below!