Grab your curly bars and stretchy pants because the Beechworth Granite Classic is back from April 28-30.
With four distances on courses designed by locals, there’s a range of extracurricular activities, a relaxed vibe and some great brewskis — an excellent way to spend a weekend in the Victorian High Country if you ask us.
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What is the Beechworth Granite Classic
Organised by the friendly folks at Bridge Road Brewery, the Granite Classic is a podium-free affair. It’s not a race; there are no prizes for being the first across the line, or who can suffer the most — heck, they don’t even have a clock running. As Cameron Bird from Bridge Road Brewing put it, the party is at the back.
“Having people riding five abreast, talking shit for 90km and not seeing any cars, that’s what it’s about,” he says.
With that said, folks are encouraged to ride at their own pace, and Bird acknowledges that there will always be a few groups out on the groad running pacelines and chewing stem. But even more folks sign up for the Granite Classic to slow down, have some fun and enjoy their surroundings.
What can you expect from the course?
For 2023, there are four distances, 15km, 45km, 90km and 115km, all touring the lovely unpaved roads around Beechworth. Every year, the course team continually works to find new roads and fresh ways to create a loop. So if you’ve ridden this event before, don’t expect to see the same bits.
“The terrain is really varied in each direction around town. If you go up towards Mt Stanley, which is 1000m (tall), you’re riding fire roads and hardpack through subalpine rainforests. Then you hit Beechworth, which is around 600m, and the terrain starts to change to more Granite, and there’s a lot of rugged, rocky terrain,” says Bird. “If you keep going down the hill, towards the national park west of here, the terrain changes again, and the roads are really fine, what we refer to as ‘champagne gravel.'”
The goal with each course is to show off the region’s diversity, and Bird tells us they’ve also received permission to take folks across sections of private land that they likely wouldn’t have seen before. But be ready to climb, as there is very little flat ground around Beechworth.
The Bridge Road crew keeps the Granite Classic routes under such tight lock and key even the Kelly Gang wouldn’t be able to pull off a successful heist. But we did learn there are “free kilometres” (ed’s note: an extended flat section) taking riders through Chiltern before a big climb back up to Beechworth at the end of the longer loops — so plan accordingly.
Gravel events vary from extensive long endurance efforts on roads wide enough for road trains to overly ambitious romps on rutted-out powerline easements, and some even involved a significant amount of singletrack.
According to Bird, the Granite Classic shoots for an intermediate technical difficulty.
“There are definitely bits that are technical enough where you’ll need to have your wits about you, and we’re not going to send you down a 15 per-cent (grade) descent through a waterbed at the bottom,” he says.
“We’re not going to deliberately put you on a shit road to make it more adventurous or something like that. We try and find the most enjoyable descents that aren’t sketchy, and the same with the fast parts. We want you to be able to push and not have to look for every single rock,” continues Kraus.
Welcome to the Bridge Road Bush Doof
If you follow the Lifetime Grand Prix series in the US — which is like the World Cup of gravel for the uninitiated — you’ll be aware of the feed zone controversy. A few riders in the lead group, who would sweep the podium at SBT GRVL, rolled through some of the feed zones without stopping with the rest of the group because they’d decided to carry extra water on the day.
The Granite Classic will have no such problem because you will want to stop at every feed zone and hang out for a while.
“The idea is to make them attractive enough that nobody is going to want to race ahead because everyone is stopping anyways,
You can expect music, DJs and drummers in the bush, and a heck of a lot more than a water jug and industrial size bag of snakes.
“There was a whole bunch of people from town that drove down to hang out at some of the aid stations last year — it was a bit of a bush doof in the middle of nowhere. There will be a bunch of musical stuff out there in places you won’t expect it, and food,” says Bird. “We will have Beechworth Bakery doing cinnamon doughnuts out of their old Model T Ford and stuff like that.”
There will also be a selection of beverages from coffee to non-alcoholic beer — it is an event put on by a brewery, after all. We’ve even heard rumours that Billy from @bikepackingsucks will be out there with a purpose-built compound along the route, hitting jumps in his trademark sandals, dad hat and speed dealers.
Tyre talk and gearing
While the Granite Classic is a gravel event, it’s open to all bikes. Krause tells us it can be done on a roadie, but you won’t have very much fun.
On that note, with the terrain for this year’s courses, Bird recommends at least a 40c tyre that has something to bike into the surface when you lean it over.
Given the casual pace, you’ll survive the day on everything from full-sized road gearing to a 1x MTB system. However over the long course, with the undulating nature of the area, 2x gearing with something in the realm of a 46/30 will be the bee’s knees.
Extra Curricular Activities
Bridge Road has designed the Granite Classic to be a full weekend. There’s a 90-min shakedown ride on Friday which starts and finishes at the brewery at 5pm. When the group rolls back into Bridge Road, they’ll be met with a bottling shed full of handmade bikes.
On Saturday night, after the event, Shimano and Life in the Peloton will host A Dinner for Granite Legends. Here Mitch Docker, Richie Porte, and another possible surprise guest will be taking questions and telling stories.
“It’s a really good opportunity to make sure that people who are like-minded are in the same room and have the opportunity to catch up, share war stories and have a bit of banter,” says Krause.
Finally, on Sunday, Ride High Country is putting on Indigo Epic Shuttles for $10. Vans will collect riders in Yackandandah in the afternoon, so it’s up to you how you’d like to get there — you can take the Beechworth to Yack rail trail, piece together some sort of back road adventure or ride the Indio Epic — we have a feature on that coming soon, stay tuned.
Registrations for the Beechworth Granite Classic are open now, and Bird tells us they’re expecting about 500 riders to join in on the fun. Head over to the event website for more info or to sign up.
Photos: Piper Albretch / @piperalbrecht, Riley Matthews / @rileymatthews, Andy Rogers / @fameandspear, Derek Rebel / @derekvrebel