If you were pitching gravel riding to a board of corporate execs as the next big investment opportunity in endurance sport, having Danni Shrosbree front and centre on the obligatory mood board to capture the vibe wouldn’t be a bad choice.
Not to say this thought would particularly enamour Shrosbree, the 2022 UK gravel champion, or any other rider currently revelling in gravel’s nascent, gritty character, but while none of these pioneers want to sleep in a bike box, home stays in local communities that host the events do the job just fine. Adventure trumps money, for now.
If gravel’s growth continues, as seems likely, a corporate balance will have to be struck. We’ve seen it in triathlon and more recently its frictions are evident in ultra running. But Shrosbree might have moved on by then anyway, and that’s kind of what makes her so cool, this moment in gravel riding so cool, and also why - for now at least - she’s willing to accept training rides dissolving into a pursuit over rutted farm tracks as ferocious sounding guard dogs in middle America lay chase.
“There are a lot of Beware Of The Dog signs around. It’s actually crazy,” she explains. “Apparently Arkansas is known for its dogs [off the leash] and that area is particularly bad.” On this occasion Shrosbree, originally born in Dorset, now based in Girona (more for “storage than lifestyle” currently, she laments) had flown out on a quick turnaround trip to race the Mid-South gravel race. It had landed the 29-year-old in Bentonville on the state border of Arkansas just south of Missouri and east of Oklahoma. Or deep in Ozarks territory if you like your Netflix miniseries.
“Us Brits describe it as a Sims town,” she continues. “The Walmart family bought it and put up new houses everywhere, but when you go gravel riding, you go off the beaten track.” That unbeaten track often takes Shrosbree past estates where, by state law, the dogs can’t be tied up all day. A tick for animal welfare, however, is not necessarily beneficial to the welfare of cyclists.
“They are super protective of the property and just go for you. Even the locals carry pepper spray. People have been messaging me to turn around and yell at the dog to show my authority, but I’m not stopping. They are too big to mess with.”
It adds to the tapestry of what has become a nomadic existence and steep learning curve in Shrosbree’s short gravel racing career to date. Mechanic skills have to be sharpened, altitude needs to be treated with respect, and an Air Tag is a must-have accessory for making sure you don’t lose your bike, even when the airline does.
Unbound
It all started with an application for Unbound, the 200-mile behemoth in Emporia, Kansas, perhaps the best known race of the seven-event Life Time Grand Prix series and certainly the longest. There was also a little naivety.
“I thought it was 200 kilometres not 200 miles and you could tell the entry form was only for people from the US,” she continues. “There was a compulsory question asking what Life Time events I’d done before that wouldn’t let me select ‘none’. I chose Unbound and in the comment box added that I hadn’t done the race yet but really wanted to and it would be great if they’d let me in for the series!”
The show of gumption worked. Shrosbree was one of only a handful of international athletes racing the series in 2023, but underlining the growth of the sport is expecting far more this year. As for the race itself, Unbound offered a challenge that proved as much about attitude and problem-solving as cycling ability.
“You could be the fittest and best prepared athlete but you never know what will happen on the day. There is a bit of luck with it, but it’s also how you deal with adversity,” she explains. “At Unbound last year, we could have said our race was over because of the mud. In the UK, if you keep riding, the mud will often flick off your wheel. There it just sticks and builds up and builds up. There’s a video clip where I’m running on the grass verge and my back wheel isn’t spinning, it’s just clogged. I didn’t know about the paint sticks…”
The paint sticks - simply a paint mixing stick - are carried by Unbound veterans as a way of removing mud from the bike to allow it to continue to function. Shrosbree used her hands instead. “I was just smoothing mud around my tyre. So I made it puncture resistant but I could barely ride it.”
The experience also made her grateful for a varied sporting background that involved running as a junior, because she estimates about three miles of the course were completed on foot. “I kept trying to find a verge to cycle on, but rocks would appear and flip me off my bike.” In the end, she avoided snapped derailleurs in the peanut butter mud and the temptation to quit, and finished fourth in 13 hours, even admitting to revelling in the masochism.
“I like it. It’s weird, but I suppose I do. I can flip into a mental state where I just keep going. I still have dark moments, and there were many moments where I was cracked, but I just fought through it.”
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Shrosbree’s life revolves around sport because, cliché that it is, it’s in the DNA. Her father Bernie, who served in the Royal Marines' Special Forces for 16 years, was one of the leading British triathletes and biathletes and a recognisable face as a three-time winner of the popular TV show UK's Survival of the Fittest TV contest in the mid-1980s before moving on to coaching with British rowing’s elite squads.
“We got it a lot as kids,” Shrosbree explains. “‘Oh, you’re Bernie Shrosbree’s daughter?’ When I rowed, I’d step on the scales and it would be: ‘Shrosbree, we recognise that name.’ It’s not dad’s fault, but we always had that additional pressure and expectation to be the best at whatever we did.”
Journey of a lifetime
Triathlon came first, and ironically with the cycling leg being the least favoured discipline. “As a kid I was obsessed with swimming, and my brother was too, but cycling never took my fancy. Because we could swim and run well, we were sought out by talent ID programmes to do triathlon and naturally fell into it.
“I always dreaded the bike because I never trained for it. I was swimming 100km a week on training camps at the age of 13. Now I look back, I don’t know how the hell I did it, but I loved it at the time.”
By the age of 16, the routine was grinding away the enjoyment. Surfing with friends and heading to the gym rendered more appeal, along with studies and a university application to Oxford Brookes. But competition was never really far away.
“Because I am quite tall and lanky, the university rowing coach called me over and said I’d got the levers for rowing, and should give it a go. I suppose I had a little bit of a natural talent and quite quickly was doing well.”
Shrosbree’s squad kept up the tradition of Brookes rowing: Winning. She would trial with the GB team, but didn’t quite fit the mould. “A frustrating process” is how she recalls trying for a national breakthrough suggesting it was because she’d not started the sport young enough. Back at university, winning Heneley Women’s titles and representing Brookes at the European University, the training was relentless.
”We’d have one of the better budgets of the boathouses, but while other squads were going to Spain in January, we’d be at Wimbleball Lake in Somerset where it was normally snow and ice. We stayed in this nearby hostel that barely had hot water, and would go on the lake for two sessions, mornings and evenings, consisting of 1,500m full gas one way, turn and the same the other way.
“We were never told how many we were doing. It built this mental capacity where we would just keep going until they said stop. It plays into my favour when I’m doing 200-mile races now, I’m able to keep pushing through.”
There are more stories to what she describes as an “old school mentality” that produced results but is anachronistic in modern student sport, and perhaps should have been anathema at the time too. Rowing could have continued post university, but Shrosbree again wanted a break from the pressure of competitive sport, until cycle commuting in London became supplemented by laps around Richmond Park.
“There’s a massive cycling community in London and the competitive side came out in me again. I was trying to get the fastest lap and beat the men; my mates were laughing at me as I wore my brother’s baggy cycling kit and commuter backpack.”
Before long the pattern was repeating itself. She joined a team and started to road race in 2018, gaining attention for aggressive breakaways. Signing for a pro continental team, Cams-Basso, was next, but over Covid gravel riding came into focus too.
“Amazing, but so challenging in so many different ways,” is how she describes it. “The courses are getting harder and more technical. It’s raising the bar constantly and you have to keep up. It’s crazy the amount of teams announced this year. A lot of sponsors are preferring it and it can be safer because it’s not on the road.”
Each location presents its own challenge. “UK gravel doesn’t represent European or US gravel. In Europe it can be a flat, fast, gravel circuit and then single track or borderline mountain biking. In the US, it might be wide roads and super loose or ruts. When my calendar is so everywhere, I have to have the ability to adapt.
“There are also a lot of mountain bikers switching over to gravel now. They're technically good at descending but might not have the engine to be there at the end. So, I work on my skills and they work on their engine.”
Gravel also provides an interesting mix between tactical racing and endurance attrition. “You have to be smart and switched on to someone attacking on a single-track section,” she explains. “But on the the endurance side it’s about not burning a match too early which is easy to do. The other big thing is fueling. I was so crap before. Now, before big races I sit with the Precision Fuel & Hydration team and we work out a full plan.” The aim is around 85-90g of carbohydrate per hour. Far more than the ad hoc approach delivered previously.
This year Shrosbree is targeting the Life Time Grand Prix events, with imaginative names such as the Sea Otter, Crusher in the Tushar and the Rad Dirt Fest.
The gravel racing has already taken her to Trinidad. But no, not that one. ”My mum said: ‘We can make a holiday out of it!’. Two months out I was looking at the route and it was some random place in the middle of the States [It’s in Colorado]. Don’t get me wrong, the mountains and scenery are amazing, but there are a lot of old US cowboy towns. Even Unbound, the biggest race, is based out of Emporia, where I think their main source of income is Unbound. For a tiny town you wouldn’t expect such a massive race.”
Early specialisation
Shrosbree says the swimming and particularly rowing no doubt helped develop her engine for the long gravel rides, but given her time again, she would have specialised at a younger age. “As a UK rider, it is hard to develop into a World Tour team. We don’t have the racing opportunities a lot of people in Europe do because of the roads in the UK. You see the road racing scene is dying here now. In cycling, the first thing they say is how old are you? The GB academy gets you into teams at a younger age, and when you’re in a team, it’s a bit easier to stay in.
“A couple of years ago I made a breakaway at the women's tour. I was 27 at the time, but they were interested in 18 year olds. It’s frustrating and another big reason I swapped to gravel. They don’t care about age; if you can perform, they’ll back you.”
Not that she spends much time looking back… unless it’s for pursuing wildlife. “When I was in Utah I was warned of moose because they just charge at you apparently. When you’re riding in America on your own there really is a lot to think about.”
One of those things is finally accepting that sport will always be a way of life. “I can’t not do sport. I’ve tried it. I’ve gone travelling, done other things and it always comes back. I love achieving and I know you can in other things, and I have in other jobs but it’s never quite been enough.”
