Planemaker

My friends and I are going to ride Free Wheel this year and were hoping to ride the gravel option for part of ride. I was wondering if any of you from Oklahoma might be able to share what the gravel roads are like down there? Specifically, I was wondering if I could be 28mm tubeless tires on my Trek Domane and ride on both road and gravel?

The plan would be to ride with higher psi on the road and dial the psi way back for gravel.

shoota 

Which part of the state includes the gravel sections? The website that has the gravel route map is password protected for some reason..

no1mad 

Try this- https://www.okfreewheel.com/2016-route/.*

Weird thing is, it let me through on the first go, then asked for a password when I went back to it (after closing the tab and then reopening a fresh tab), then I double-clicked and it let me through again.

Looked at the Day 4 options- goes right through my town- and if there is any gravel to it, it has to be on the beginning leg before reaching Sapulpa.

*Link should work- I copy and pasted it into Firefox without any issues (Opera is my default).

shoota 

Well that's a little east of where I grew up so I'm not familiar with the gravel there. But I can't imagine it is much different than the Stillwater area. Depending on how rural the route is there may not be any gravel at all. But you know how it is, if it rains it doesn't matter, the roads are gonna suck. I would guess that a 28mm tire wouldn't be enough except for hard packed dirt, of which there isn't just a whole lot of. I would call some local shops to that area and ask.

pizzamania

I live in OK and have ridden a bunch of gravel in the area. the gravel is really large and inconsistent (sometimes deep, sometimes very sporadic) and 28s aren't the best choice. I have done some gravel riding on 28s, none more than 15ish miles at one time though.

It can be done, it isn't gonna be super fast though. While I would definitely recommend against doing a huge amount of the gravel route on such small tires, if you want to just get a bit of gravel mixed in to your freewheel experience you should be ok. Tubeless you may be in better shape than I was, I couldn't go super low TP without risking a flat.

If it were me on 28s I would probably do like day 4 and 6 on gravel going from the maps, it looks like they are mostly the road route with some gravel detours thrown in.