Training for Punchy Gravel: Lessons From the 2026 Gravel Worlds in Nannup

On 10 and 11 October 2026 the UCI Gravel World Championships were held outside Europe for the first time, on the gravel roads around Nannup in Western Australia. Marianne Vos won the women’s race alone for her 15th world title across all disciplines. A day later Magnus Bak Klaris of Denmark won the men’s race on a photo finish from a group of four.

Neither course was built around one long climb. The UCI’s course announcement described short climbs that come in quick succession, often steep, with little recovery between them. Amateurs met that problem on the same roads: men aged 19–49 rode the elite men’s course, and women aged 19–49 and men aged 50–64 rode the elite women’s course. Below: what the course demanded, what the research on repeated efforts says, and how to train for it.

How the Races Were Won

The women raced 125.6 km on Saturday. Tiffany Cromwell, in her final race as a professional, attacked midway through and was caught as the leaders reached the final local circuit. A group of ten reached the last lap together and split on the steep gravel climbs. The UCI Gravel World Series report describes Rosa Klöser accelerating again and again on the long final ascent, with Vos answering every move. Vos attacked after the last summit, 4 km from the line by the UCI’s account (about 3.5 km in Escape Collective’s report); Klöser crashed in a slippery corner on the descent and finished 27 seconds down. “Rosa was incredibly strong, especially on the climbs,” Vos told Velo.

The men raced 144 km on Sunday. A Danish-led chase caught the early three-rider break with 20 km to go. Connor Swift attacked on Foley, the last serious climb, and the final selection was Swift, Bak Klaris, Mads Würtz Schmidt and defending champion Florian Vermeersch. Würtz Schmidt crashed in the same bend where Klöser had fallen the day before, TOUR reported, and got back on. All four were given 4:09:05; the photo finish put Bak Klaris first, Vermeersch second and Swift third. Paul Voss was fifth at 7 seconds.

The Course in Numbers

The published course figures changed between April and race day, which is why reports disagree. In its course announcement of 15 April the UCI listed 140.7 km and 3,625 m of climbing for the elite men and 123.1 km and 3,100 m for the elite women. The organiser’s course page, with course files updated on 21 August 2026, lists 144 km / 3,713 m and 125.6 km / 3,179 m. The UCI’s race report gives 144 km / 3,713 m and 125.6 km / 3,175 m, and those final figures are used here. Escape Collective’s race reports give the same 125.6 km for the women but 144.5 km for the men.

More than 80% of every course was unpaved: 84% of the women’s race and 85% of the men’s, according to the UCI. Both races climbed about 25–26 metres per kilometre. The organiser’s event director, Stephen Gallagher, describes regular climbs of 1 to 3.5 km at steady gradients, with broad, flatter gravel roads between them where riders can regroup and eat before the next block of climbing. He also says the hardest kilometres were saved for last, with the final summit 3.5 km from the finish. The age-group category winners on these two courses needed between 4:23:31 and 5:14:38, and everyone behind them took longer.

What Short Climbs With Little Recovery Demand

The useful framework is critical power. Chorley and Lamb’s 2020 review describes critical power (CP) as the boundary between the heavy and severe intensity domains. Below it, oxygen uptake settles to a steady state; above it, oxygen uptake keeps rising until VO2max is reached and the effort ends. W′ (W prime) is the fixed amount of work you can do above CP without recovery, and Jones and Vanhatalo (2017) describe it being used faster the further above CP you ride. Our critical power explainer covers how CP compares with FTP and how to test it.

On a course like Nannup, each steep ramp ridden above CP spends part of W′, and the easier roads between climbs are where it comes back. The research says three things about that refill.

It is slow

Ferguson et al. (2010) took six men to exhaustion on an ergometer, let them recover at about 20 W, and measured W′ again. After 2 minutes 37% had come back, after 6 minutes 65%, and after 15 minutes 86%. That is a half-time of about 234 s, far slower than the recovery of oxygen uptake (about 74 s).

The easier you ride, the faster it refills

Chidnok et al. (2012) had seven men alternate severe-intensity work with recoveries at different intensities. Riding the severe power continuously, they lasted 384 s on average. With recoveries in the heavy domain, still below CP, they lasted 47% longer; with moderate recoveries, 100% longer; with light recoveries, 219% longer. Skiba et al. (2012) built this into the W′ balance model, in which the recovery time constant shrinks as the gap between recovery power and CP (DCP) grows: τ = 546 × e^−0.01×DCP + 316 seconds. For a rider with a CP of 250 W, that is about 650 s when recovering at 200 W and about 440 s at 100 W.

It gets slower as the race goes on

Chorley et al. (2019) gave 20 active adults repeated maximal ramp tests separated by recoveries and found that less W′ came back after each successive effort, a fatiguing effect that existing W′ balance models do not include. Clark et al. (2019) gave 16 participants a 3-minute all-out test before and after up to two hours of heavy-intensity cycling. After two hours, end-test power (the test’s estimate of CP) was 9% lower, and the work available above it had fallen from 17.9 to 13.8 kJ. With 60 g of carbohydrate per hour, end-test power held (254 W against 260 W at baseline), but the work capacity above it still fell, to 13.5 kJ.

Put together: by the final loop, every climb draws on a smaller reserve that refills more slowly, on a course that saved its hardest kilometres for last. The women’s final followed that shape, with repeated accelerations on the last climb and the winning move just after the summit.

The models have limits. Chorley and Lamb point out that the Skiba equations were developed on untrained participants, that the recovery time constant varied widely between people, and that the model underestimated recovery in elite cyclists. Jones and Vanhatalo also describe W′ recovery as highly variable between individuals. Use the numbers for the direction of the effects, not as an exact fuel gauge.

How to Train for Punchy Gravel

1. Raise the aerobic ceiling

In Chorley et al.’s 2020 study of 20 men, the W′ that trained cyclists recovered during the first 2-minute recovery was strongly related to their VO2max (r = 0.81); in untrained men it was not (r = 0.18). The authors conclude that trained cyclists who want faster W′ recovery should prioritise aerobic fitness: VO2max and CP. This is a correlation, not a training trial. In the Skiba model, a higher CP also puts any given recovery power further below CP, so W′ refills faster.

2. Use short repeated efforts

The 30/15 has been compared with longer intervals and with continuous riding in trained cyclists. In Rønnestad et al. (2020), elite cyclists did three sessions a week for three weeks of either 3 series of 13 × 30 s with 15 s recovery and 3 minutes between series, or 4 × 5 min with 2.5 min recovery, matched for perceived effort. The short-interval group raised 20-minute mean power by 4.7% while the long-interval group lost 1.4%, and peak aerobic power rose 3.7% against −0.3%. Urianstad et al. (2024) measured the oxygen cost: in 19 well-trained cyclists, 30 s at 118% of 40-minute maximal power with 15 s at 60% gave a higher average share of VO2max, and 1,123 s above 90% of VO2max against 879 s, than riding the same mean power continuously, in women and men alike.

These were elite and well-trained riders, so the size of the gains may not carry over to amateurs. The structure still matches Nannup’s demand: efforts well above 40-minute power with recoveries too short to refill W′.

3. Make some hard efforts uneven

The women’s final was a series of surges on one climb, and uneven work has a training case too. Bossi et al. (2020) gave 14 well-trained cyclists two sessions with the same work duration and mean power, one with constant power and one with power varying inside each work interval. The varied session gave 410 s above 90% of VO2max against 286 s, with no difference in heart-rate training load or perceived exertion. A 2026 meta-analysis by Schoenmakers et al. (86 articles, 239 protocols) found that variable-intensity work intervals gave more time near VO2max than even pacing, and that work intervals of 2 minutes or more gave more than short ones. The authors add that the link between time near VO2max and long-term adaptation still needs research. For climbs of 1–3.5 km, that supports mixing 30/15 sets with longer climbing efforts that include surges.

4. Practise the recoveries

The Chidnok and Skiba results put numbers on what happens between climbs: light recoveries allowed far more work above CP than heavy-domain recoveries below it. Keep the recoveries in repeated-effort sets genuinely easy, and on long rides use flatter stretches to drop the power and eat, which is how Nannup’s event director describes the roads between climbs.

5. Do some of it late in long, fuelled rides

Clark et al. tested only up to two hours; the Nannup winners raced for more than four. Their results still suggest that a race finale is ridden with a lower CP and less W′ than a fresh test shows, and that carbohydrate protected CP but not W′. Putting some repeated-effort work in the second half of a long ride, fuelled as in a race, rehearses that state. Our Unbound gravel training guide covers the long durability ride, and the on-bike fueling guide covers intake.

6. Set intensities individually

Percentages are a starting point. Bossi et al. (2023) had 18 cyclists ride the same 4-minute-on, 2-minute-off session to exhaustion with four common ways of setting intensity, a W′-based method among them. With every method, time to exhaustion varied widely between riders (coefficients of variation of 44–59%). If a set is far too easy, or impossible to finish, adjust it.

Beyond the Engine

The surface shaped both elite races. “There was more mud than I expected,” Vos told Velo, and Klöser and Würtz Schmidt crashed in the same bend on the descent after the final climb. Handling on loose, wet gravel and the right tyres matter on a course like this; our gravel bike guide compares tyre clearance and geometry.

Sources

• Official race and course information: UCI, “2026 UCI Gravel World Championships: Vos repeats, Bak Klaris rises” (race report, October 2026); UCI Gravel World Series, course announcement for the 2026 UCI Gravel World Championships (15 April 2026), “Marianne Vos Claims Historic 15th World Title at UCI Gravel World Championships in Nannup” (10 October 2026), “Bak Klaris Wins Gravel World Title in Nannup Photo Finish” (11 October 2026) and “Nannup Crowns Twenty Age-Group World Champions at the 2026 UCI Gravel World Championships” (14 October 2026); Gravel Champs Western Australia, Courses page (course files updated 21 August 2026).
• Race reports: Escape Collective, “Magnus Bak Klaris wins four-up sprint to take gravel world title” (11 October 2026) and “Marianne Vos wins second gravel world title in Nannup, Australia” (10 October 2026); Velo, “Marianne Vos Wins UCI Gravel Worlds, Gomez Villafañe Sixth, Heavy Crash Mars Race” (10 October 2026); Leon Weidner, “Gravel World Championships in Nannup: Klöser narrowly misses out on the title, Vermeersch beaten” (TOUR, 11 October 2026).
• Critical power and W′: Chorley A, Lamb KL (2020), “The Application of Critical Power, the Work Capacity above Critical Power (W′), and Its Reconstitution: A Narrative Review of Current Evidence and Implications for Cycling Training Prescription,” Sports 8(9):123; Jones AM, Vanhatalo A (2017), “The ‘Critical Power’ Concept: Applications to Sports Performance with a Focus on Intermittent High-Intensity Exercise,” Sports Medicine 47(Suppl 1):65–78; Ferguson C et al. (2010), “Effect of recovery duration from prior exhaustive exercise on the parameters of the power-duration relationship,” J Appl Physiol108:866–874; Chidnok W et al. (2012), “Exercise tolerance in intermittent cycling: application of the critical power concept,” Med Sci Sports Exerc44:966–976; Skiba PF et al. (2012), “Modeling the expenditure and reconstitution of work capacity above critical power,” Med Sci Sports Exerc 44:1526–1532; Chorley A et al. (2019), “Slowing the reconstitution of W′ in recovery with repeated bouts of maximal exercise,” Int J Sports Physiol Perform 14:149–155; Chorley A et al. (2020), “Physiological and anthropometric determinants of critical power, W′ and the reconstitution of W′ in trained and untrained male cyclists,” Eur J Appl Physiol120:2349–2359; Clark IE et al. (2019), “Dynamics of the power-duration relationship during prolonged endurance exercise and influence of carbohydrate ingestion,” J Appl Physiol 127:726–736.
• Interval training: Rønnestad BR et al. (2020), “Superior performance improvements in elite cyclists following short-interval vs effort-matched long-interval training,” Scand J Med Sci Sports 30:849–857; Urianstad T et al. (2024), “The higher oxygen consumption during multiple short intervals is sex-independent and not influenced by skeletal muscle characteristics in well-trained cyclists,” Eur J Sport Sci 24:1614–1626; Bossi AH et al. (2020), “Optimizing Interval Training Through Power-Output Variation Within the Work Intervals,” Int J Sports Physiol Perform 15:982–989; Schoenmakers P et al. (2026), “Time spent at or near VO2max during high-intensity interval training: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil 18:358; Bossi AH et al. (2023), “Conventional methods to prescribe exercise intensity are ineffective for exhaustive interval training,” Eur J Appl Physiol 123:1655–1670.

Calculated values (average speed, climbing per kilometre and the Skiba time constants for a 250 W rider) are Paincave’s arithmetic from the figures above.

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