The Spirit World 100 is 102 miles on gravel and ranch roads through the San Rafael Valley borderlands, with about 6,400 feet of climbing that comes as rolling grades repeating all day rather than one named climb. Early November brings a cold pre-dawn start and warm, dry afternoons, and there’s a hard six-and-a-half-hour cutoff near mile 68 that ends the race for anyone behind it.
This is an eight-week plan for the Spirit World’s distance and rolling climbing, built around the hours you have — and it assumes you already have endurance to build on. Eight weeks extends your durability and climbing; it isn’t enough to build a 102-mile base from scratch.
102 MI · 6,392 FT CLIMBING · GRAVEL AND RANCH ROADS THROUGH THE SAN RAFAEL VALLEY · 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 Spirit World 100 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.