La Drômoise Gravel is 43 miles with about 4,900 feet of climbing, mostly on forest fire roads with short paved passages and some stony technical sections, navigated by GPS trace rather than a fully marked course. Late September brings mild days and cool mornings, with variable pre-Alpine mountain weather possible.
This is an eight-week plan for finishing it, built around the hours you can give it during the week. Most of the work goes toward riding the climbing on tired legs and getting used to loose forest-road surfaces, because a course navigated by GPS trace rewards riders who are comfortable on the terrain rather than reading signs.
43 MI · 4,921 FT CLIMBING · NEARLY EXCLUSIVELY FOREST FIRE ROADS; SMALL PAVED ROAD PASSAGES · 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 La Drômoise Gravel 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.