Interview: Dylan Johnson and drop bars at the Leadville 100

Dylan Johnson is all about efficiency.

Take a look at Johnson’s YouTube channel and you will see data-driven commentary about everything in the world of gravel and endurance racing. He is, as he would be quick to say of himself, someone who loves analytics. So, when Johnson decided to run drop-bars at the Leadville 100, it became a story regardless of his placing.

It became even more newsworthy when he finished 17th on the set-up, at the fastest-ever edition of the long-running race, despite living at an elevation 8,000 feet lower than the thin air of Colorado in Brevard, North Carolina. Yes, Johnson trained hard for it. But in some ways, his result was born out of the way he thought through the course.

To dive into his ride, and to offer perspective for those curious about the Leadville Trail 100 MTB race, we spoke to Johnson for an exclusive Q&A to talk bike tech, strategy and managing the long season of the Life Time Grand Prix:

A quick note before we begin. A couple of the terms mentioned here are specific segment and climb names on the Leadville 100 course. Through the links we have tried to provide explanations for what they are. The main ones are Columbine and Powerline. Columbine is the highest point on course and the turnaround point, since the course is basically an out and back. Powerline is the second. It is just super, super steep.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Q&A with Dylan Johnson

Courtesy of Dylan Johnson

Dylan Johnson's drop-bar Factor Lando

GCN: To start, I guess my question is simple: Why did you come to the conclusion that a drop bar bike is best?

Dylan Johnson: Leadville is called a mountain bike race but that is just because gravel bikes were not invented yet. Honestly, if they put on Leadville in 2023 they would call it a gravel race and people would show up on gravel bikes.

Honestly, I do not think a gravel bike is a good bike for Leadville. Too many spots that are too rough and the tires are too narrow, you risk flatting, it's not more efficient – but in 105 miles, which is the distance of Leadville, there is 1.5 miles of singletrack. And that's not even the part I was worried about running drop bars. It was the Powerline downhill and the Columbine downhill. Taking out those two spots and running a gravel bike is a no brainer.

So, I actually brought both my drop bar mountain bike and my normal flat bar mountain bike and I rode them both on the course and my times last year to compare. Before the race I had gotten so used to riding the drop bar bike that my times were within 5 to 10 seconds as my race time from last year.

During the race itself, my time down Powerline was the fastest it's ever been and I was faster down Columbine on race day this year than last year. And that's obviously not the section where I thought the advantage would be. There is a fairly significant rolling to flat section between Columbine and Powerline, probably about an hour on the way out and an hour on the way back, where aerodynamics matter a lot. Every lifetime race has banned aero bars so I thought drop bar bikes would be a significant advantage there and I think it was.

It's hard to compare times, but when I was in groups I would pull through significantly faster at the same power that we were doing on the climbs when we were pulling at the same speed.

Courtesy of Dylan Johnson

Up close and personal with the drop-bar Lando

GCN: It is interesting that you're the one who has gone the drop bar route since you came into gravel as a mountain biker and not a road racer. How has your way of approaching the sport changed as you've shifted to gravel, are there things about the drop bar set up that you generally prefer now?

Johnson: I guess it is interesting that I am so obsessed with aerodynamics, considering I am coming from the mountain bike instead of from the road. You'd think it would be the other way around, but I think honest answer to that is  I just want to go as fast as I possibly can and I don't care if that comes from weight savings, or tire rolling resistance, or drive chain efficiency, or aerodynamics – if it makes me go faster I am into it. It just happens to be that aerodynamics are the most significant marginal gain in gravel racing so I embraced it as soon as I learned about it.

At this point I've been racing gravel for six years and I have always trained on a road bike even when I have only been racing on a mountain bike, so drop bars are not foreign to me. At the end of the day I am interested in stuff that makes the bike go faster and I don't care if that technology is coming from the road, time trial, or triathlon – if it's faster I am interested.

Training and pacing

GCN: Looking more broadly at Leadville, what is the depth of your preparation at this point? When it comes to pacing plans, nutrition plans, mentality, how much are you parsing out beforehand? How much are you strategizing what you each at which point, or how many watts you'll do for a specific period? Or is it a more general guideline that you try to follow? How deep is the pre race planning beyond the bike set-up?

Johnson: As far as nutrition goes, it's pretty straightforward. I try to hit 90-100 grams of carbohydrates per hour, whether I am running Leadville or Unbound. Some argue that at altitude nutrition is even more important because you're burning through more glycogen faster, but there's only so many carbohydrates your gut can handle and it does matter what altitude you're at. I also try to maximise that number so that it doesn't change between any of the races.

As far as the pacing strategy goes, I was less concerned with my average speed or the wind and I was more concerned with power output. I actually gave myself a power ceiling on the climbs and that was 280 watts. Of course, if you give yourself a ceiling of 280 watts you'll be way off the back on the first climb, but I didn't care. Last year I blew up catastrophically, which most people do.

I think Leadville is a race where pacing matters a lot and most people mess it up. I wasn't going to do the typical strategy where I try to stay with the leader until I blew up, especially because the leader is Keegan Swenson who is going for this ridiculous record. Obviously that's not a sustainable pace for anybody except Keegan. Probably, five minutes into the first climb I was in 60th place but I kept picking people off all day because I paced myself well and other people didn't. I was still doing 275 watts on the last climb which is an indication I paced myself really well.

Courtesy of Dylan Johnson

The unorthodox cockpit of Johnson's Factor Lando

GCN: Were you training at that power level consistently at a similar altitude? Like, instead of going and doing threshold and VO2 efforts, did you try and dial in the feeling of that pace?

Johnson: Yeah, there was lots of riding at that race pace to try to figure out what it would be, honestly. You can do conversions to sea level, and that works decently, but you never know how your body will really react until you're riding at that altitude. I had an idea where it would be, but I had to make an effort to race at this altitude in training to see what the pace would be. 280 watts up the climbs was a bit of an ambitious goal, but I decided to go with that because I felt like my shape was good and it worked out.

GCN: Considering the series in general, what have you learned about doling out your effort and preparations for each specific race with such a long season?

Johnson: My two A races for the last two years have been Unbound Gravel and Leadville. With the length of the season and intensity of those races, I like to take a break after those races. So that's two mid season breaks in the season. I guess you could call Big Sugar an A race too, but at that point in the season it's all about not letting your fitness go down the tube.

Honestly, the other races in the grand prix just kinda happen. I might do some specific efforts but they are definitely secondary to those two events. I don't know if that's the best way to approach the series, but it's the way I like to approach it because Unbound and Leadville get disproportionately more attention than the other races in the series. I don't know, maybe it's the YouTuber in me, but that's kinda what I am going after.

GCN: Returning to Leadville to wrap things up, what do you think worked well and what is something about your set-up that you might re-evaluate for next year?

Johnson: I thought the drop bars worked great. The fact that I got a PR down Powerline and faster race times on Columbine and in the race in general shows that. Those are the two sections of the race where theoretically drop bars are not optimal and if I am going just as fast in those sections, and the entire rest of the course is faster with drop bars, then I don't foresee myself putting flat bars back on my bike forever. I am convinced Leadville is a drop bar course.

As far as changes, I think tyres. I ran 2.2 Continental Race Kings. If Continental were to come out with 2.4 or 2.3 Race Kings, I'd be on that instead. I am a fan of wide tyres and I am on a hardtail so when it does get quite rough, 2.2 bounces quite a bit more. They just haven't made those tyres yet. The reason I went with those tyres is because they seem to have the lowest rolling resistance. I tried the new 2.4 Maxxis Max Speed tyres on sections of the course and it seemed like I was losing time.

Courtesy of Dylan Johnson

The tyres that Johnson used were the Continental Race Kings. This was the one part of the set-up that he felt like he might change for next year

Before we go, it is worth noting that Dylan Johnson was not riding a gravel bike. His frame was the Factor Lando hardtail mountain bike. Leadville has been done before on a gravel bike with wide clearance – Jared Gruber, the well known cycling photographer, raced the event on a gravel bike way back in 2016 – but this setup is novel and was ridden at a level that has not been seen before.

The main news from Leadville was, of course, Keegan Swenson’s monster course record. The Santa Cruz rider was on his mountain bike – a stripped down version of the Highball to be precise – but he turned a massive (for the course demands) 40t chainring to the win. In an instagram post, however, he said he considered going the drop-bar route as well. Next year, if he hopes to go even faster, we might even see him try it.

Other riders are not so sure. Zach Calton, who finished 6th at Leadville, told GCN in a separate interview that he felt it was definitely not faster. Carlton is not one who shies away from drop-bar bikes as he was a top ten finisher at Unbound Gravel and the recent SBT GRVL.

In terms of the women, all of them remained on standard mountain bikes. An interesting note about Sofia Gomez Villafañe's winning bike was that she went with the full suspension Specialized Epic World Cup, but she ran 47mm gravel tires.

What is clear is that the proposition of tech at Leadville is not getting simple. There truly is not simple solution to the complex course. It is just evolving – and will almost certainly continue to proceed along that varied and unorthodox path.

Factor

Factor bikes is a UK based high-performance frame brand which makes bikes built predominantly for racing.