Danni Shrosbree won the first-ever national title for elite women at the 2022 British Gravel Championships. She then emerged from a swirl of pro roadies trying off-road races and took fourth at Unbound Gravel 200 in 2023.
As the long season of racing and travel winds down, and 2024 looms with another round as an invited elite rider in the Life Time Grand Prix (LTGP) US-based series, the 29-year-old Briton’s rallying call was “bring on the off-season”.
“My aim this year in LTGP is to take all my learnings/mistakes from last year and do it all that bit better! I had quite a lot of bad luck in the final races but also I suffered due to the amount of travelling and altitude,” Shrosbree told Cyclingnews.
“This year I am mapping out my calendar a lot better and getting out to the races earlier than last year to allow for adaptation to altitude and time so recce course etc. I also will be working on some MTB skills hopefully in January. I am super excited to do Unbound again of course!”
2023 was her first foray into a full season of gravel, one in which she committed to competing in five of the seven events in the Life Time Grand Prix off-road series.
“Life Time asked us [invited riders] ‘what race are you looking forward to most?’ I wrote down Unbound. I’d never ridden that distance before. I looked at the course and it was weird, I just really wanted to get stuck into that race,” Shrosbree said about the jewel of the Grand Prix.
“I knew that I’m mentally quite strong. I knew that I’ve got a big engine, in terms of I can just stick at one pace. I knew that at Unbound a lot of people would probably blow up and things like that. So that race is about not only being fit but getting your nutrition right. Sometimes it all comes together.
“I actually had no smooth ride, though. I had a nightmare in the mud like most people, but I didn’t. I didn’t know about the paint sticks and things like that,” she laughed, recalling how she used her hands to clear mud off her bike in Emporia while the experienced riders used wooden paint sticks, which was much easier.
A true privateer who travels the globe for gravel glory, Shrosbree finds that jet lag has become her most reliable, if pesky, companion. For races, she also needs to request time off from her full-time job in product management at Vivobarefoot, a British footwear company.
“I did have to take some unpaid leave, but they’ve been really good, pretty supportive,” she said.
After a trip back to the UK for the Gravel…
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