ENVE Gravel Camp
ENVE Gravel Camp was about a lot more than just riding bikes. It was about personal connection, product education, and, of course, bike racing, but most of all, fun.
At the beginning of March, we brought our team of gravel athletes together in St. George, Utah, for three days of riding everything from MTB single-track to peanut butter mud, played Pop-A-Shot and ping-pong, and got a deep dive on the products everyone is riding.
With several new athletes coming on board, we wanted to create an environment that focussed on the athletes getting to know each other.
THE PLAN
The traditional training camp model involves bringing a team of athletes together and putting them through their paces. Training hours are often high, and while there is an emphasis on education, the goal of training camp has always been just that—training.
Professional road teams are starting to do more ‘bonding camps’, which are sometimes called ‘media camps’ at the start of each season. The emphasis on these is for the riders to get to know each other, learn about the team, and ultimately get ahead of the year’s media content. This is what we did with ENVE Gravel Camp.
“We learned a lot last year with Phase II . We realized that you need to be able to cultivate that learning mentality and relationships in person. My value to ENVE isn’t just winning bike races, but educating and inspiring younger athletes behind me.
ENVE Gravel Camp is a chance to get all of us together in one place. No stress around racing or thought around who’s strongest. Simply go out and ride bikes and talk about products, and how we encounter races, and share a little about what we’ve learned. It puts the entire team in a good place leading into the year.” - Alexey Vermeulen
THE WEEK
“Our goal was to create a bond with all the athletes. We have riders of all different ages and backgrounds with very different goals. This week was our chance to get everyone together in one place to get to know each other. We want to learn from each other, learn about the product, and shoot content that can be used throughout the season.” - Neil Shirley, Director of Marketing at ENVE.
Over the three days, the team of riders took on three different rides. The first day included some fast and flowy single tracks starting from Rapid Cycling. On the second day we headed onto the edge of Zion National Park for a three-hour loop with some spectacular climbs and descents, and then on the final day we found the snow, which was exciting to everyone until reaching the mountain summit and faced with a cold, 10-mile descent full of peanut butter mud.
The emphasis was just as much on off-bike activities as it was on riding bikes. ‘Garage Olympics’, a combination of table tennis, basketball, and skeeball ruled the first night, and it was Alexey who came out on top.
There was an out-of-the-blue evening trip to Culver’s, where the staff seemed quite shocked to see double-digit numbers of hungry cyclists looking for ice cream.
THE ATHLETES
We have a diverse range of athletes on the ENVE Gravel Team in 2025. All our athletes have different racing backgrounds, and there’s a range in ages between eighteen and thirty-six.
Heather Fischer moves across to gravel after DNA Pro Cycling’s retirement, and Finn Gullickson moves over after an impressive first year in the Life Time Grand Prix. British rider Joe Laverick comes aboard after spending a lot of time racing in the US in 2024 while managing ‘Ribble Rebellion’, and both Alexandra Charles and Caleb Smith come from a NICA background to focus on the newly forming U23 LTGP.
*Not all of ENVE’s gravel athletes were in attendance due to schedule conflicts.
THE EQUIPMENT
Each athlete was armed with the most capable gravel bike on the market - the MOG. With the modern tire trend of “bigger is better”, the MOG provides the clearance to ensure that equipment compromises are not having to be made. Both Alexey and Finn had 2.1” tires fitted to their MOG as a preview to what you might find at the Sea Otter Classic, Round 1 of the Life Time Grand Prix. Unlike past years, the LTGP will start with a gravel race rather than the traditional Sea Otter mountain bike race.
While all three new colors of the MOG were featured in the group, each athlete had a unique build, ranging from Shimano GRX to SRAM XPLR to TRP drivetrains with their preferred pairing of ENVE wheels. ENVE’s complete lineup of wheels provides a wide array of options from the superlight and compliant G23 that Alexey Vermeulen rode to victory at Big Sugar Gravel last year, to the SES 3.4 and 4.5 that provide an aero advantage on fast courses at race speeds.
Be sure to follow each athlete on Instagram to keep up with them throughout the season.
