I Helped Design the Gravel Nationals Course Coming to Minnesota. Then We Pre-Rode It (And It’s Going to Hurt).

With Gravel Nationals coming to La Crescent, Minnesota this September 2025, Chris Stindt of Smith’s Bike Shop joined a crew of media and gravel pros to pre-ride and scout the route. The verdict? It’s steep, scenic, and brutally hard. If your idea of Midwest gravel is smooth rollers and cornfields, this course will break that illusion—and maybe a few riders too.

Words by Chris Stindt

Late last summer it was announced that La Crescent, MN was going to host the 2025 and 2026 Gravel National Championships. This is a relatively new national championship and the first editions were more of what people typically associate with flyover/flat farm country gravel. I was pretty excited to have people finally discover what I’ve known for a few years now: the Driftless region is one of the best places to ride a bike in the country.

I’ve been behind the scenes working with the event planning committee, helping out with the route plans. I have a bit of experience with local gravel - I started after the Almanzo craze (one of the earliest huge gravel races) but right on for the Filthy 50 (an event that still quickly sells out 1000 spots). My first gravel race was in 2016 on some 38c hybrid tires that I crammed into my 2x, v-brake, twitchy handling cyclocross bike. In the past decade since that experience I’ve been riding a whole lotta gravel, locally and around the Midwest. I even wrote the Nxrth gravel guide for the La Crosse area! I do plan to publish an updated version for visitors and spectators planning to attend Gravel Nationals, so keep an eye out for that.

So, what do I have to share today? Well, this week Ben Delaney, of YouTube fame, came to visit and do some shooting. JP from the Stable Cyclist hung off the back of a service car while Dan from Driftless Gravel Cycling rode shotgun.

I gathered up the gravel bros, a couple of friends, and we were joined by local gravel pro, Chase Wark, who sadly, did not come with a disc rear wheel. He did however still have his super narrow chopped-drop handlebars on his mostly untouched from Unbound bike.

Ben was riding an unreleased gravel (all-road?) bike from a major manufacturer. It had 40 or 42 slick tires on. I just mounted up some beyond spec 55s from Rene Herse onto my Checkpoint. Everyone else was somewhere in between, with the 45 Terra Speed and 42 Pathfinder as the most popular tires. Every single bike had disc brakes and maybe that’s not even really part of the conversation anymore, but I’m mentioning it anyway.

Chase Wark would like me to recommend everyone be on 2.2” tires like me. He thinks you’d be fastest on them, especially if you’re a pro. As the crank turns, it was by far the best tire choice for the day - we literally found dump trucks and graders out adding loose, fresh gravel to the roads. For race day? Usually the fresh gravel gets laid in the spring and smoothed out all summer until it’s like pavement by the fall. Usually. I think the race will be won by some fast, not too big tires. For amateurs? Or those who are less confident descending steep, loose, windy gravel roads? Bigger is better. I had by far the best time on our pre-ride.

What else can I tell you? Keep an eye out for the course maps. I’ll dissect them once we get a public view of them. Expect sustained climbs of about 5-10 minutes, with the number of climbs depending on the length of course you have. This is not rollers, and outside of the mountains, most folks will never see this much sustained elevation gain. Same for elevation loss - the downhills are steep. The scenery, if you can relax enough to enjoy it, is beautiful. But the course is hard.

Ben interviewed me for his video and we talked about how hard the course would be. That was at the beginning of the ride - and then near the end we were side by side and I looked at him and said...this course is going to destroy some people. And he said, uh, maybe not destroy. I paused, considered it, and said, nope, it will. He just laughed.