Earlier this year Australian event promoters Rapid Ascent announced a new race in an ancient place; the Shimano Gravel Muster. As long-time hosts of the popular mountain bike stage race in Alice Springs known as The Redback, the event crew decided to bring their expertise in events to something new for Australia – a multi-day gravel race.
Rapid Ascent run one of the longest running gravel events in Australia, with the Great Otway Gravel Grind that takes place on the same weekend as the iconic Otway Odyssey in February. While that event has two distance options and some unique time out zones, the Shimano Gravel Muster will be something else entirely.
The Shimano Gravel Muster
Running in late winter, the Shimano Gravel Muster starts on Thursday 22 August and runs through to Sunday 25 August, 2024. And while The Redback had us ride from Alice Springs for each stage – the Gravel Muster will be taking us into the outback, as we stay in outback cattle stations and mix timed and untimed sections each day.
- Day 1: 45km total, including 1 racing segment of 17km
- Day 2: 150km total, including 2 racing segments of 94km
- Day 3: 90km total, including 2 racing segments of 47km
- Day 4: 95km total, including 1 racing segment of 55km
We’ll race to Simpsons Gap, to Hale River, Ross River and back to Alice Springs. I think what I like most from the course is that this will be a true outback adventure. Rapid Ascent have a thoroug run down on each stage, including water points, on the Gravel Muster event website.
The event entry covers some breakfasts and lunches, all dinners, accommodation at the stations, transfers and all the essentials you’d expect from a multi-day race.
Why I’m heading to the Shimano Gravel Muster
I’ve made the trip to Alice maybe eight times (and here at MarathonMTB.com we wrote the book on what you need to know…), always for mountain bike stage races, and while seeing the centre of Australia is something most people get around to once or twice in their lives, I just can’t stop going back. Blue sky, red dirt, mountains so ancient they’ve been worn down to the bones, I always find myself feeling connected to the place, even as a tourist/bike racer who’ll never truly understand it – and if I think about it, maybe it’s that mystery about the Red Centre that draws me back, too.
After a big year travelling overseas last year, stringing together three, six-day marathon mountain bike stage races and travelling to eight countries with a bike in tow, I came home kinda burnt out with the whole bicycle thing. For months, I was unable to face rolling down the same four runs on my local trails, but nauseous at the thought of seeing another international airport, so I wondered whether the motivation to race would ever come back. Lucky for me, Australia is full of amazing landscapes and incredible challenges… and every now and then a new event appears that just hits different.
Fact is, nothing beats being in the first wave to attend a new event. Those avant garde racers get to experience something truly new, when things are still small and intimate, and event organisers are really, really trying to impress you. That’s compounded when the race is an inventive, slightly whacky, fully relaxed, fun, daring event in the Simpson Desert in its spectacular, sunny winter.
Rapid Ascent have designed a race that’s not always a race, that mixes social bunchies in the most incredible surrounds with timed segments set at tactical points during each stage to create some rowdy outcomes. Added to this, rather than leaving everyone to book their own hotels and stay put in the relative familiarity of Alice Springs (Woolworths, restaurants, pools), Rapid Ascent have designed a totally unique experience that stands alone among anything I’ve done on a bike: a full-service, expedition style approach, with meals and logistics included, with racers staying on real outback stations (stars, swags, campfires). If gravel is about getting back to the essence of bike riding, this is about getting to the heart of what makes riding a bike in Australia special.
I’m so glad I’m going to make it, and have a few opportunities to share my experiences while I’m riding those incredible outback roads via MarathonMTB.com. It’s been a long time between race blogs, so I can’t wait to try to capture the bluest sky on the planet, the jagged Red Centre horizons and a brand new style of racing – so drop in if you can’t make it there in person.
But if you can…
