Do you think you’ll still be riding bikes at 80 years old? What about racing bikes at 80? If you’re Bill Humphreys, you might think, “Why stop there?” This year, Bill qualified for and competed at the UCI Gravel World Championship in Belgium.
Bill dedicated considerable time, energy, and resources to compete. After a tough race, he finished second in the M80+ category aboard his trusty Litespeed Toscano gravel bike. But as Bill will explain, his experience at the Gravel World Championships was about much more than a result.
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Who is Bill “Bike Guy” Humphreys?
If you don’t know Bill, well, you probably should. He’s a cycling legend, often known by his moniker “Bike Guy.” He started his cycling journey in 1971, when he was a 26-year-old “long-haired hippie” living in San Diego without any plans or direction for the future. Fortunately, Bill discovered bike racing.
He quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the top U S road cyclists. In 1973 he was part of first fully sponsored US team to ever ride a stage race in Europe. It was the Raleigh/Century Road Club getting excellent results in the 1973 Tour of Ireland, that opened the doors for future US Teams to race on the continent.
After his pro career, Bill continued working, sometimes in the bike industry, sometimes not. He has been a longtime Litespeed fan and even worked as a sales rep for Litespeed from 1998 to 2004. Through it all, he has never lost his passion for the bike. Perhaps, that is what keeps him young!
When I met Bill, the thing that struck me was how he looked and sounded 20 years younger than he actually was. As a cyclist rapidly entering middle age, it’s riders like Bill who give me hope that I can continue cycling as a lifelong pursuit!
Discovering Gravel at 75
I wondered, ‘Is it too late to take up gravel? Has it just passed me by? Can I really do this?
Gravel is still a relatively new discipline and Bill only started riding a gravel bike in the last 4-5 years. Venturing off-road wasn’t anything new to him though, since he had developed his skills in the mid-90s aboard a Litespeed mountain bike. He told me the story of how he fell in love with gravel on his first exploratory ride.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
From MTB to gravel.
Bill Humphreys: “When I worked at Bicycling Magazine I was the special events marketing director. I was traveling to all these great events, and some of them were mountain bike events. The guys at Litespeed called me up and said, ‘How would you feel about riding a Litepeed while you're at these events? So they sent me a Unicoi. That was my introduction to Litespeed and mountain biking. I really liked it and I was surprised in the woods that I had the basic skills and I wasn't completely out of touch. So that's what got me started.
“Then I started hearing stories about guys I knew, good riders, getting hurt and breaking femurs out in the woods and being stuck for hours in the cold. This was before GPS, and there was hardly a cell phone. My wife just said, 'Hey, you know, you better be careful going out alone.' So I stopped. Then around 4 years ago, I started seeing this gravel thing emerge and I'm thinking, ‘That's similar to mountain biking!’
“Meanwhile, because the Internet has exploded, I've reconnected with virtually everybody from the '70s. I'm hearing stories about some of these guys, as they get older, only riding indoor trainers. But at the same time, I’m hearing about other guys taking up gravel.
“So I wondered, ‘Is it too late to take up gravel? Has it just passed me by? Can I really do this?’ You know, it's a whole new element. I have total respect for it. Then Raleigh sent me a gravel bike for my 75th birthday.
“I went out and rode down the first dirt road I could find. I went to the end and it turned into a doubletrack. I went a little bit further and it turned to singletrack. There were some rocks and some roots and I found myself way the hell out in the woods. I realized I still have the skills and I just loved exploring the dirt roads around here. When I realized I could do singletrack, it just had me hooked."
Bill’s Experience at Gravel World Championships
Guys think they’ll clunk it in the big ring, get up to 25 mph, and blow right over these roads. No, you won't. You can hardly see you're so blind with pain!
The World Championship is the biggest UCI gravel race of the year. I asked Bill what inspired him to take on such an ambitious challenge and what it was like racing in Belgium.
See Bill's competition, lurking behind him...
Training & Preparation
BH: “I'd lost interest in Masters road racing, but this gravel thing had the same ambiance that mountain biking did when I started — it’s informal. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody cared. It was a nice atmosphere to learn something new. I just started entering events. You mainly race against yourself. It was strange going to gravel events when you're 79 and 80. The beauty of it though is nobody knows how old you are!
“I just started thinking, ‘Why don't I try some age group stuff?’ I looked into it and realized 80 is the time to do it. I looked at the first two World Championships in Italy and there was no rider over 80. I figured the next year in Belgium that maybe three or four or five guys would show up, and that's perfect. I’m ever going to be a world champ, it’s there!”
“I started thinking about all the new stuff I needed to succeed. I had to learn how to use a power meter to measure watts. I had to learn how to use GPS because so much of the course isn’t marked. It took me forever to learn how to upload a route. Wahoo took a chance on me. I try not to bother them too much, but I know some of the customer service people so well now. I also had to get Zwift and learn how to train year-round. You gotta do all of that stuff, and believe me, I'm not mentally set up for that stuff! Just learning everything was the most challenging part, but I knew it was necessary.
“I decided to get a coach too, so I looked up a coach from Ireland that I had gotten to know at one of my “Raleigh Boys Reunion” rides. He coached me over the internet, gave me the workouts, and I just plodded along. It works, you know. I know what my watts are and I know I can go for 25 minutes at a certain power. If I know that, and I’m 25 minutes from the finish line, I'm going to kill people. I'm not going to blow up!”
The Gravel World Championship Course
A screenshot from the Men's Elite race. Did Belgium have "real" gravel?
A lot of the online discourse about this year’s Gravel World Championships revolved around the course. The racing itself was exciting, but some critics complained that the terrain wasn’t rough or technical enough to be a “real” gravel race. Since Bill was actually there, I was curious what his thoughts were on the course.
BH: “Give me a break! Sure, it’s not American gravel, but you’re crammed into a cobblestone street that's four feet wide with hundreds of riders and you end up racing down these rough goat paths full of sharp turns and mud. I'm sorry. Bodies were flying everywhere! Guys were crashing all around me. People were pulling each other out of the mud and out of the woods.
“This is Flanders! I'm so happy that I can check Flanders off. But yeah, you can’t talk until you've ridden Belgium. You don't know speed. You don't know elbows. You don't know how these riders shove each other around. This is like a kermesse on dirt and cobbles in the middle of a farm field. These are working roads and there's no gutter. After you've been on the bike for four hours, you've got no speed. Guys think they’ll clunk it in the big ring, get up to 25 mph, and blow right over these roads. No, you won't. You can hardly see you're so blind with pain!”
Race Day Strategy
Bill’s main rival in the M80+ age group was 80-year-old Belgian, Roger Landeloos (pictured left - Belgian jersey) . Roger had a serious advantage coming into the World Championships — he’s a local who trains on the same roads that were used for the World Championship course.
Bill wasn’t able to get as much course recon as he had hoped, but he did meet a helpful local (pictured right - Moots jacket) on the Litespeed Owners Facebook group who sent him videos of the course to study. Bill’s plan for race day was to mark Roger. The race was so chaotic though, it quickly became a battle for survival.
BH: “My plan was just to ride next to Roger from the start but I couldn't find him! I was standing behind the M75-79 group and he wasn't there. There was supposed to be a one-minute separation between age groups but that got lost in the shuffle. The adrenaline was up and guys were crowding each other and groups were going off together. It was bedlam. So I got caught up in that.
“All of a sudden it's race city. In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘You got to go as fast as you can so you don't fall down!” When you start off fast and get caught up with riders trying to pass you and get positioned, if you’re going too slow, you're going to get knocked down, so you don't have a lot of options. We were catching and running into slower riders too. I could handle my bike and was fortunate to get through all that.
“When Roger caught me, it was around mile 25. I thought, ‘Oh good. Now we can have the race I've been dreaming of.’ Except I'm absolutely blown! This guy's been doing what I was supposed to be doing — just taking his time. I should have sat up at the start, but I just didn’t know where he was.
“We raced together for a few miles and I was toast. He started to pull away and at that point, I knew I just had to finish. If I kept chasing him down, I wasn’t going to finish.
Bill riding the final climb during his course recon.
“One highlight for me was this steep cobbled climb with 2 KM to go. It’s this typical Flanders cobbled road that goes right into an alley. I rode up it a couple of times the week before and I thought, ‘I'm able to get up here now, but how am I going to feel when I hit this thing after 4 hours of racing?’ I knew it wasn’t going to be the same.
“With 5 KM to go, that climb was on my mind — this cobbled wall just waiting for me. It's been waiting for me for four hours. ‘I’m almost there,’ I thought. ‘Can I get up without getting off?’ And I did it! It was close. Getting up that baby with good speed and technique was key.”
Bill finished second with a time of 4:46:43, about 27 minutes after Roger. I asked him if he would have done anything differently if he had the chance to do it over…
BH: “I wish I’d been able to start with Roger. I don’t think it would have changed the outcome, but it would have been a lot more fun racing with him through the day. That's the only regret I have, and that's fine. You know, that's part of life. So many good things happened that I am well past that. I'm going to ask him if he wants to come over here!”
Going to Worlds Was About More Than a Result
Want to know the biggest highlight? Here it is. My son took a video of me finishing and I can hear him yelling, ‘Go, dad!’ And his voice is cracking. That's it for me.
After the 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships, Bill was officially crowned as the 2nd fastest M80+ gravel racer in the world. It’s a result that he can be incredibly proud of, but Bill explained that the result ended up being less important than the journey. Getting Bill to Belgium and across the finish line took a village, and he was incredibly thankful for all the people who helped him achieve his World Championship dreams.
BH: “I can't talk about riding Worlds without talking about all the support I got. If you're thinking of going to Worlds, in Belgium, and taking it seriously and training for months, that's all going to cost you money. It’s not just airfare, hotels, and food. I had to upgrade my bike. I had to get power meter pedals. I had to get a better helmet. You got to get this. You got to get that. And you got to travel to other races to tune up. You're looking at thousands of dollars.
“When I went down to race Fayetteville to qualify, things started falling in line. I told my boss I wanted to go and he said, ‘We may have some accounts there. You can fly down there on our company ticket and stay there for the week and work those accounts, and ride the race.’ It felt like I had died and gone to heaven! I mean, what? It’s a great company.
“So while I'm down there in Fayetteville, I run into Jim Gentes (the founder of Giro). Jim is legendary and I'd always wanted to meet him. He's in the parking lot of my hotel in Fayetteville and we got to talking.
“We're chatting and he goes, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I'm Bill Humphries.’ He goes, ‘Holy **** Bill Humphries?! You're famous!’ I said, ‘Yeah, but you're rich!’ So we hung out all weekend and before I left, I told him I was trying to go to Worlds, and he said, ‘When you’re ready to go, I'll support you. I'll write you a check.’
“Then another guy who I keep in touch with said, ‘Bill. When you're geared to go, I'll write you a check.’ All of a sudden I got a bunch of guys, Barry, Peter, Jim, writing me checks for $150, $250, $500. This kind of love… I mean… I was just overwhelmed.
“So I went looking for more sponsors and reconnected with you guys at Litespeed. Then one night I got a phone call from three Irish guys in California. They said, ‘We heard you're gonna ride Worlds. We thought we'd give you a hand!
“That kind of energy is the real story. I’m just an 80-year-old guy who's paid his dues. Nobody said, ‘You better win.’ There was none of that. They were just wide open. They saw that I wanted to do this and all said, ‘**** it! We're going to help him out.”
Left: Bill and son. Right: Bill's Irish coach (second from right) and support crew.
“The guys flew over to help me at the race, give me hand-ups, and hang out with my son. My son was there! What a dream that he even wanted to come. He didn't get to do a lot of sightseeing. He hung out with the old man and these Irish guys for a week. And the crowd at the finish was huge. Want to know the biggest highlight? Here it is. My son took a video of me finishing and I can hear him yelling, ‘Go, dad!’ And his voice is cracking. That's it for me.
“You know, you're waking up every morning, just thanking the Lord that you're still alive, that you got friends, and everything's good. You can't let anything bother you when you have this kind of energy around you! I mean, this was a once in a lifetime thing. I couldn't have done it without all that energy. I'm still overwhelmed by it all."
Bill’s Titanium Gravel Bike: The Litespeed Toscano
Titanium is without a doubt the best material for a bike, especially a gravel bike.
Bill knew he had to up his game when it came to training AND his gear before Gravel World Championships. To set himself up for the best race possible, he decided to order Litespeed’s latest flagship titanium gravel bike: the Toscano. The Toscano uses progressive geometry and a specially shaped 6AL/4V top tube that reduces weight while providing greater tensile strength and lateral stiffness than a standard drawn tube. Bill explained why titanium is his frame material of choice for gravel racing.
BH: “When I decided I was going, I told myself, ‘Get the bike of your dreams.’ In other words I thought, 'You're running out of time. But you're still fit. You got nothing broken. Don’t let money stop you.' I also knew I wanted to get back on titanium.
“I also thought, ‘I'm not buying anything until I see what Brad’s got.’ (Brad DeVaney is Litespeed’s lead product engineer.) When I was a sales rep, I used to come down to Tennessee for the new product launches and Brad would come out with all his new toys and I would just be going crazy over what Brad could develop. We were all just so in love with what he could do and we couldn't wait to get out there on his bikes and sell the **** out of them.
“Brad showed me the new Toscano and I said, ‘Now we're talking!’ It’s just feels light years ahead because he's had so much time to think things through and develop the frame. It's light. It handles like a dream. On the dirt, I’ve put it places it's not supposed to go and it just comes right back out. It's bulletproof.
“Titanium is without a doubt the best material for a bike, especially a gravel bike. The resilience you got—it's not going to break. I used to walk into bike shops and throw Litespeeds on the floor and jump on them! That was how I sold bikes. A titanium frame has a lot of the same elements as a steel frame, but it's lighter and it’s not going to rust. Plus you got the quickness and the acceleration. It’s got stiffness when you need it.”