The Safari Gravel Race is 69 miles with about 8,200 feet of climbing on mostly unpaved ground — fast red-clay gravel, singletrack, and genuine game trails through Hell’s Gate. It runs high the whole way, starting near 6,200 feet and topping out above 7,200, with cool mornings that give way to strong equatorial midday sun.
This is a twelve-week plan for riders who can ride long but want to build for what this race asks around the hours you actually have, seven to eleven a week. Most of the work goes toward steady time on unpaved ground and repeated climbing, though the altitude and the equatorial sun are the race’s demands, not something a plan can hand you.
69 MI · 8,202 FT CLIMBING · ~6.4K FT ALTITUDE · 12 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 and a mid-plan retest, so the plan runs on your real numbers
- The full Safari Gravel Race 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.