River City Gravel Fondo is 71 miles with roughly 4,000 feet of climbing on a mix of maintained gravel and forest service roads, with technical descents and variable surface quality. Rain is possible year-round, though the forest cover offers some protection.
This is an eight-week plan for riders who can already ride long but want to build for this course specifically, shaped around the hours you actually have. Most of the work is time on gravel, with the repeated climbing and technical descents worked in, because the demand here is holding your riding together across changing surfaces at mile 40 and again through the climbs at mile 55.
71 MI · ~4,000 FT CLIMBING · MIX OF MAINTAINED GRAVEL ROADS AND FOREST SERVICE ROADS · 8 WEEKS · 7–11 HR/WK · FINISHER
WHAT'S INSIDE
- Structured workouts on your calendar, with real power and heart-rate graphs
- Strength work built in, with video walkthroughs
- Weekly notes from me, plus the Gravel Grit mental program
- A testing week, so the plan runs on your real numbers
- The full River City Gravel Fondo guide — terrain, gearing, fueling
Hey! I'm Matti - also known as the Gravel God himself!
If you're into gravel racing and want to be as fast as possible, you had better choose me!
Why?
Because I'm the fastest, least talented person to ever ride a bike. I've made every mistake in the book so you don't have to and I'm here to save you years of failure and struggle.
When I'm not helping my athletes get faster on a bike I write obvious, overlooked training content that makes cycling training easy to understand.