2024 - Our Rides in Words, Photos, Maps and Videos

[Chargeride]

GR8 LAKES GRAVEL 2024: The Racing Day

There were three racing formats this year: Ultra (480 km), Classic (100 miles) and Sprint (50 miles). E-Sprint was a subcategory of Sprint; production e-bikes restricted to 25 km/h were allowed. There was not much talking about the batteries though; the intention was to disallow DIY and throttle/fast e-bikes from the competition.

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My brother Jacek instantly took the lead in his Classic Group 8!

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There was a very steep climb in the race beginning. To make it better understandable: I had to use SL Turbo mode and the 32-51T gearing to climb there myself! The arrow points at Jacek. (I also have a photo showing weaker riders dismounting and walking their bikes uphill!)

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My first e-bike competitor met on that morning: Wojtek. As you can see, my facial expression means fear (Why does Wojtek ride an e-bike? Lower back ache. He is otherwise a healthy and strong rider).

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Specialized Vado SL 4.0 was the most chosen e-bike for E-Sprint Wojtek's EQ was hardly modified. He added the Cane Creek Thudbuster suspension seatpost and had two Range Extenders stowed in water-bottle cages. He was carrying the water-bottle in a pouch on handlebars. Regarding the tyres, he used 38 mm Schwalbe Marathon (tubed).

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Anna rode a Mondraker Prime R G4, a full suspension e-MTB with a Smart System Bosch motor and a 750 Wh battery. She said: 'My husband is racing in the Classic. I thought I would ride the E-Sprint not to get bored waiting for him!'

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Darek (riding a Kross Hybrid Prestige 630 (a Polish made e-bike with a Shimano motor and 630 Wh battery, 45 mm tyres) was my only competitor on Sudovia Gravel race.

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Sebastian (centre), a friend of Darek, came with a Decathlon Rockrider e-MTB. I do not know much about that e-bike except it had a Brose motor and 2.8" tyres. Sebastian was as young and strong as he could easily ride that e-bike above the speed restrictor, at a really high speed!

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Wojtek (627) starting his race!

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(The day before) There was a lot of cobblestone on the race route. Washboard gravel was one of the worst surfaces we had to ride though. (I rode my 42 mm tubeless wheels at 40 psi as I am a heavy person).

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(The day before) Masuria is known for her stoney roads... I soon got used to it!

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(The day before) I must admit there were long segments of premium gravel on the race as well. The first part of the race led through the woods, where the surfaces were adequate, and the greenery was giving us a nice shade against sunshine on a warm day!

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(The day before) Masuria is the Land of Three Thousand Lakes. Here, a small cove of Śniardwy, the largest lake of Poland. Unfortunately, we didn't see much lakes on the ride, as the route was planned for the maximum "ride flow", or fast uninterrupted ride, so most lakes were bypassed at a distance.

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(On the race). The distance table (km) made me laugh, so I had to stop and take this picture. A distance to Warsaw would be understandable but the other city is rather small and not the most distant from Masuria at all!

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35 km into the race. Because of drought this year, even good gravel roads became sandy! (In the last part of the race, we had to negotiate deep sand for even 2 kilometres!) Here, I shortly stopped to discover I lost my tail-light (because of the road vibration). The light was later found by the organiser crew and I could collect it in Warsaw on Monday!

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Your typical Masurian countryside during the drought.

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The only pit-stop for the Sprint. I realized I was the last rider on the race there! That could not last long... I greatly accelerated!

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No time to stop and take pictures! Masuria is undulated. It is not as hilly as Sudovia but the share of climbs was significant (I consistently rode at SL 75/75%, 25 km/h restricted).

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One of very few places where we actually could see some water was Szymoński Canal, one of many canals connecting Great Lakes.

Actually Racing
As soon as I learned from a rider I was the last person in the race, I accelerated and didn't allow me any more stops on the ride! This way, I could overtake nine riders. As we met "the bathtubs of sand", I took the opportunity of that chance equalizer. The lightweight Vado SL helped me riding on the edge of the field (even if the surface was still loose there). I was actually sprinting, and used SL Turbo for the last kilometres to stay at 25 km/h. 10th last place in Sprint? Come on, I am a 63-yo person with medical conditions!

When I was riding through the finish line, the announcer said through the PA: 'Here's Stefan Mikulski, the winner of Sudovia Gravel E-Sprint! He was not lucky this time!' and all my e-Sprint competitors cheered!

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Anna won the E-Sprint race, and was the 2nd Female Sprinter overall! Kudos to her!

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The E-Sprint Men podium: Wojtek (1st), Sebastian (2nd), Darek (3rd). Wojtek told me he had a chance to win E-Sprint but he made a stop on the ride...

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Jacek finishing the Classic Race. He was 81st/251.

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My brother missed a riding partner on that race to get a better place!

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My E-Sprint race map. I started Wahoo 300 m from the starting line.

After the race, people started gathering for social events. I admit we drank a little that night

Lovely pics, is that the Galaxy 24?.

 

[MTO]

I havent ridden for a few days, my mothers neighbour, a lovely woman with bad health problems, but still goes shopping for my mum, and has done for decades, well her entire kitchen floor collapsed with dry rot, quoted 5 grand, she hasnt even got 500.
So I volunteered to rebuild it, cant be that bad surely.
15 6 x3 joists ,4m by 3m, I picked them up, cut them, fitted them, then 20 floorboards as well.
Im completely and utterly fickd, just crashing on the bed every night.

That is proper exercise.

What a great thing to do!
And welcome to my world lol

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Lovely pics, is that the Galaxy 24?.

Thank you!
Indeed, it is the S24. However, I process the photos with Adobe Lightroom, and give them the final touch with ON1 Effects. (Currently, Lightroom is as good as I actually could skip the ON1). Many of the photos from the waterfront were technically bad (taken against the sun), so the processing really helped.

Current Adobe Lightroom has two functions that really help enhancing photos. One is the Dehaze that makes most pictures look good and crispy. The other is AI masking; you can automatically select Subject, Object, People, Background, or Sky in addition to regular masking option (and then you can Invert the selection if needed). My e-bike was the Subject here, so it was easy to make it stand out. Dehaze made the water look beautiful.

 

[Chargeride]

Im so old school.
I edit my videos in the free Windows moviemaker that comes with win10,
and I edit my pictures in paintshop pro 3.

The world is passing me by.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

I was active as a photographer in the last decade, and my last camera is a Pentax K-1. However, DSLRs are too heavy and too vulnerable to take them on e-bike trips, hence I use the photo processing skill and tools applied to the good takes from a good smartphone. I actually should start shooting the photos RAW, and process the RAW files instead of JPGs.

 

[Chargeride]

My stepfather was big into photography, he died many years ago and left us with a drawer of Fujifilm 35mm cameras and lenses, they look so dated, but I learned a lot from his photography books, depth of field, flattening effects of zoom etc.
They were also full of 'artsy' nudes, of course I was only there for the Fstop.

 

[JGcycle]

A few pics from this morning's 26km ride:

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

A few pics from this morning's 26km ride:

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Your recent photos are making me miss the fall color we used to enjoy in Denver. Here in San Diego, the leaves that do fall tend to go straight to brown. The rest just stay green year round.

 

[JGcycle]

Your recent photos are making me miss the fall color we used to enjoy in Denver. Here in San Diego, the leaves that do fall tend to go straight to brown. The rest just stay green year round.

I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks, as the colour here typically peaks around October 10th or so.

 

[dodgeman]

I rode 17 miles today. I picture that is becoming common in this area as the soybeans and corn are being harvested. This is a pretty small combine by today’s standards.

 

[RabH]

The weather finally played ball today, it was very blustery but a beautiful day! The wind was bitingly cold from the NW and gusting around 30mph, I decided to head SE and enjoy the wind for a while! I took the back roads as much as I could out to Auchengray, one of our few long straights around here! @Prairie Dog would call it a short one...

Back to the twisties soon after, my bread and butter!

From Auchengray I took the back road to Kaimend and down to Newbigging where I turned east for Dunsyre with the Pentland Hills surrounding me!

The sun was trying its best to break through!

Eventually it did and the temp difference was noticeable!

The hills were looking spectacular at times!

I wouldn't mind living here!

I then joined the main road for a few miles towards Biggar and was now battling the wind, the good views helped lift my spirits!

As well as the good roads!

The Coulter hills then came into view!

I then passed through Biggar and took the road towards Tinto hill, I soon had a nice view of the hill!

At this point I decided to get off the main road and headed up the back roads to Thankerton, I then had an even better view of the hill!

I passed over the River Clyde at Thankerton!

I also had a great view of the Coulter hills from here!

I continued on the back roads and found a new road which runs parallel to the main road, it was a little rough in places and very hilly but it got me away from the traffic! Eventually it joined the main road near Hyndford where I headed up the big climb into Lanark, stopping at Lanark Loch for a break and some photos!

I usually avoid Lanark but the alternative road would have pitched me directly into a very chillly 30mph headwind so I braved the town today! I really wanted to head down into the Clyde Valley anyway as I have been neglecting it for a while! So I enjoyed the big descent down into Kirkfieldbank, a boy racer was attempting to pass me down the descent but he didn't get a look in until the bridge at the bottom where there is a short straight which just allowed him room to pass! 100 yards later he stopped in the village!

I continued along the valley to Crossford where I turned north to cross the bridge over the River Clyde!

Then I had the big climb up Coziglen, a tough climb which really depleted my second battery along with the headwind! I stopped part way up for this photo of one of the garden centres!

I reached the top of the climb at Carluke and headed over the back roads to Allanton and back up to Hareshaw and luckily I had enough battery left for the few miles that were left, after climbing my last hill it dropped to 20% so i judged it perfectly! It was so good to get out again and despite the wind it was an amazing day on the bike! I was only intending to do around 70 miles so I didn't fully charge my batteries!

 

[Stefan Mikes]

2025 Gravel Races

All the gravel races I participated in, 2023 and 2024.

Now, Jacek tells me we both will participate in all Gravel.Love races of 2025: Sudovia, Varmia, Great Lakes. As I am rather ashamed by my poor performance in this year's e-bike races, we agreed I would be riding the Giant Trance E+ 2 Pro in 2025. The 2.6" tyre full suspension e-MTB will be good for any terrain (especially for technical singletrack and steep descents in rough terrain I am scared of!), and the full motor power will give me more fair chance against my competitors. The important feature of Trance is it is a legal 25 km/h e-bike, so no protest could be raised against it (my Vado 6.0 is a 45 km/h e-bike). The only thing I need to learn is 'ride all the time without any stops!'

Two fun-facts:

• A Gravel.Love race rule reads: 'You must wear a helmet while riding'. A man showed a 1-minute race video, in which he rode helmetless! How stupid you can be... He provided the proof of breaking the rule himself and got not only disqualified but also cancelled from the race results!
• Another rule is: 'No littering!' Another rider not only threw rubbish on the road but also verbally insulted another participant who pointed that out to him; and the witnesses could easily be found. Another DSQ and cancellation.

The Gravel.Love organizers set up a unique race for September 2025: The Lakeland Ultra Gravel. It will be a 1,200 km race in the Poland's lake-land (Sudovia, Mazuria and Varmia). Only the top 10 from any Gravel-Love Ultra race plus invitees from abroad. Cannot wait to watch the streaming of that event!

 

[MTO]

The NorCal Pacific coastline was looking stellar today, mid 70’s F* and sunny. It is often times either foggy or windy, but very nice today. We did a 25 miler out and back.

 

[Prairie Dog]

The weather finally played ball today, it was very blustery but a beautiful day! The wind was bitingly cold from the NW and gusting around 30mph, I decided to head SE and enjoy the wind for a while! I took the back roads as much as I could out to Auchengray, one of our few long straights around here! @Prairie Dog would call it a short one...

Long straights? Oh, sorry..I wasn't paying attention as I was mesmerized by the scenery. Gorgeous!!

 

[Prairie Dog]

A short clip and accompanying pics as we took to the trails this morning. It was great to log a bit of precious time on the Levo and almost forgot how much fun it was. Hard to believe it’s been a month since my last ride. For a bit of changeup, I decided to shoot with the GoPro strapped to the back of the saddle. Best viewed in 4k if you can swing it.

 

[Chargeride]

That footage is so smooth, I though ditect mount would test hypersmooth, but it copes well, thats Superview I presume, you cant boost the smoothing in that mode.

 

[Chargeride]

I took the bmx into the forest with the Neo, I now know how hilarious I look on it.

 

[JGcycle]

A few pics from this morning's 23km ride:

 

[Prairie Dog]

That footage is so smooth, I though ditect mount would test hypersmooth, but it copes well, thats Superview I presume, you cant boost the smoothing in that mode.

Yea, it turned out better than expected if it wasn’t for the tail of my jacket flappin’ in the breeze and the sketchy mount. I had it set on superview/hypersmooth boost. In addition to sporting a larger sensor, the GP11 also has hyperview but does also tend to eat through batteries. I haven’t tried using Autoboost but apparently it automatically stabilizes and/or crops depending on the camera’s movement.

I took the bmx into the forest with the Neo, I now know how hilarious I look on it.

Never mind how you look, that Neo is sick. Palm sized and no need for a controller. Got me thinking now.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

A few pics from this morning's 23km ride:

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The photo with the marsh and rainbow is magical.