| How To: Ride your road bike on dirt and gravel

We recently shared registration details for the Ella CyclingTips Women’s Ride on April 12. Our ride includes a bit of dirt and gravel, which we know might be new terrain for some of you. To ensure you’re ride-ready for the big event, we reached out to Gracie Elvin who graciously shared her top five tips for tackling off-road riding on your road bike.

The two-time Australian national road champion may be better known for her road riding these days, but don’t let Elvin’s skinny tires fool you. Her start in the sport was on the dirt. The U23 Australian national mountain bike champion recently returned to her roots when riding the famed gravel sectors of Strade Bianche – and loved every second of the challenge.

During the Italian one-day race, Elvin noticed that much of the peloton was far less confident than she was riding off-road. Elvin credits her mountain biking background with her comfort in taking her road bike over non-paved terrain – and shares her top five tips for rides that include an off-road portion.

1. Don’t be afraid. As soon as you start to dread something, it seems a lot harder. Think of it as a fun challenge, as something new to achieve, and you will have a much more positive experience.

2. Relax. Once you are on the dirt or gravel, try not to tense your upper body. As soon as you stiffen up, you will find it much harder and will crash much easier! Loosen your shoulders, elbows and hands, and let the bike guide you. Use your core strength to manoeuvre the bike.

3. Stay high. When on loose surfaces the best line is the highest part of a camber because then you have room to move if you slide or need to drift outwards, particularly in corners.

4. Learn to “feather” your brakes. This means putting light pressure on your brakes intermittently (every couple of seconds), almost evenly to both front and rear. Not grabbing the brakes hard reduces the chances of your wheels locking up and your bike sliding further and faster than if you hadn’t used the brakes at all!

5. Know your limits but find ways to push yourself. If you are nervous, don’t be the first of the group to lead through a gravel section. Riders behind can make you stressed, increasing your chance of making mistakes. Instead, find someone you know is a good wheel to follow who would go a touch faster than you would on your own. It’s amazing the things you can do when you see someone else do it right before you!

Ready to rock the dirt and gravel with us? Ride with us on April 12 as part of The Women’s Ride, a single day celebration of women’s riding. It’s Victoria’s first mass participation riding event designed especially for women. Learn more about our ride here. Register for the Ella event here.

winkybiker

Relax, sure…. but what does “use your core strength to manoeuvre the bike” even mean? The brake feathering/intermittent advice also doesn’t make much sense to me. My advice is too look well ahead and control your speed EARLY to avoid having to brake harder than the limited traction on gravel allows. More even pressure on both brakes (rather than the 3:1 F:R on dry tarmac) makes sense, though. A front lock-up is obviously to be avoided, but you can still brake a bit harder on the front if required.
- Adam Fuller
  
  It means steering with your hips. You move your body around and that moves the bike rather than using the bars.
  - winkybiker
    
    I can twist my hips all I like. Doesn’t make the bike steer. It’s not something that is intuitive in the slightest to me. And why is it better do do something strange and un-natural on gravel? There is a lot of pop-physics bandied about in bike handling discussions. It seems like this is an example.
    - Warwick
      
      Winky do you ever ride with no hands? Its the same technique for steering, look where you want to go and use your hips/core to balance & steer the bike.
      - winkybiker
        
        Yeah, I can ride with no hands. Steering is possible but less controlled and direct than if I have my hands on the bars. No hands you lean the bike to turn, the trail/caster on the front steering geometry keeps the bike under control. I still think that steering with the bars is the most controlled way to turn a bike. At low speeds, you turn in the direction you want to go, at above walking-pace, it becomes counter-steering (push the inside bar forward to tighten the turn). This comes naturally and unconsciously to all those that can ride a two-wheeled vehicle. Thinking about “using core strength” is just nonsense, in my view. Falls into the same category as “pushing on the outside pedal to increase traction”.
    - John
      
      It means driving through the hips - engaging your core muscle and effectively turning the bike with the rear wheel as much as the front, not turning the bars as much and using your weight to push the bike into the ground. It makes really good sense in practice.
      - winkybiker
        
        OK, what exactly does “driving through the hips” mean? “Engage” my core? Hell, I’d marry my core if I could figure out how that would help me control my bike on gravel.
        
        My weight is always pushing my bike into the ground. That’s called gravity. I’ll sort-of imagine that I use up and down unweighting/weighting to do a fast change of direction on a downhill S-bend on tarmac (like skiing) but I can’t see myself being anything like that aggressive on gravel (admittedly you do see DH mountain bikers doing this, but usually on bermed corners. They do it to manage the suspension compression and keep even traction pressure through changes of direction).
        
        The closest I get to steering with “body language” is on a mountain bike when I’d deliberately skid my rear wheel to help around tight downhill hairpins. I can’t see this skill being used on a fire road or other non-technical sections, but even then, most of the input is from the bars and brakes, not my “core”. I guess I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m not good enough.
        
        John
        
        Try riding single track and making it flow, not skidding (and ripping the trail to pieces). It’s not about weighting and unweighting, it’s about moving your weight respective to what the bike is doing, forwards and backwards, left and right.
        
        winkybiker
        
        The skidding I do is very rare. Only when the switchback is so tight as to make it impossible (for me) to turn the bike tightly enough any other way. But I gave this example as the only case where I feel that I’m turning the bike with anything other than the steering and the wheels.
        
        Laying the bike under you like a MXer does not, to me, seem the same as “pushing the outside pedal”, but I agree that it can give a good position for control when your bike wants to move around under you.
        
        For a given corner radius and speed there is an identical force through the tyres that is required to make the the turn, regardless of body/bike poitioning. The positioning affects control and traction, therefore determining whether or not your tyres can actually generate the required force. There certainly isn’t more “horizontal force pushing your bike outwards”.
        
        geez
        
        Complain much?
        
        winkybiker
        
        I do enjoy a good discussion, that’s for sure.
        
        Nono_Yobiz
        
        When you are “steering with your hips”, what you’re actually doing is pushing the bike frame such that the front wheels turns a little in the opposite direction of where you want to turn. Your bike then pops out from underneath of you to that side, and you’re set up to lean and turn into your intended direction. Take your hands off the bar, and make your headset wiggle. That’s what you’re doing. Once you realize that *all* turning is initiated by countersteer, it makes sense.
        
        winkybiker
        
        Yep, totally agree on the countersteering explanation, except that by far the most common (and easiest) way to initiate a turn is with the bars. You don’t even realise that you’re doing it, but essentially a little steering to the right (often just a natural wobble, really), if uncorrected, makes the bike lean and turn left. It happens naturally, without thinking of “engaging one’s core” or “driving with the hips”.
    - Tony Abbott
      
      I think what you call pop-physics comes back to the fact that it’s such an intuitive skill — it’s tacit knowledge — so it’s natural descriptions might seem a tad ‘airy-fairy’.
      - winkybiker
        
        Agree with this. Body positioning and movement are of course important. I’m not advocating a rigid, static position. The issue I have is with essentially meaningless advice like “engage your core” and “drive with your hips”. The most useful advice is to relax, look well ahead and anticipate.
jules

interesting! there are so many tips for handling technique. none of them will instantly turn you into an expert, but I find they provide you with useful stuff to try and increase your confident. another couple I like is to lift your elbows - motocross racers do this a lot to turn their upper bodies into more of shock absorbers. note this more at MTB (Flat bar) tip. 90% of it is relaxing though - you will get nowhere while you are tensed up. look where you want to go, believe you are going there - if you 2nd guess yourself “I don’t think I’ll make that turn” then you won’t - you’ll steer straight into the ditch/tree/bush you were trying to avoid..
Karl

I don’t have a lot of experience but the way it feels to me is more like coaxing the bike rather than forcing it. I’m not sure what is physically happening but it does feel oddly like using your hips to steer and it definitely feels better if you allow the bike to choose it’s own way within limits. Keep your grip light. I guess the core comes into so you don’t lose grip altogether on jolts ;-)
Lulu

Since the rules of cycling are N+1 (n = number of bikes in the house already) - my method for learning was - buy a cyclocross. Ride ridiculous gravel/ dirt/ mud/ mtb tracks on cyclocross. Get on road bike and attempt some of the gravel - and you are fine (plus you then have a cyclocross for the winter season).
Jessy Vee

If I could add anything to the discussion (and especially from a girls perspective!) I would add this: Don’t just sit on your saddle and pedal along. You will need to move around on the saddle (almost lifting yourself slightly off the saddle at times, so you put a touch more pressure into your pedals - thus lowering your centre of gravity and stablising your bike) and tighten various muscles to keep your power pushing forward. What the others are calling ‘engaging your core’ just means that you are tensing the muscles in your mid-section at times to compensate for balance and the sketchy feeling of your tyres drifting through the gravel. You might tense your core to help your right thigh a little more on a pedal stroke to compensate for carrying momentum over a small bump or deep bit of gravel. Or, going down hill, you might ‘suck your tummy in’ as you drift around a corner, slightly locking your outer hip muscles to drive a little extra force through the outside pedal. BUT you want to keep your arm and leg muscles loose, because your knees and elbows are your natural shock absorbers.

The most important part is to keep scanning the road ahead, and preparing for what you see coming up. It’s not hard to ride on gravel and dirt, but you have to be aware of more than if you were riding on hotmix.

Wow.. it’s so hard to describe what comes so naturally now.