Words by Andrew L'esperance
One of the main things that I love about a gravel bike is that it is designed for the wide-ranging terrain you might come across on a ride. It can do a lot of things very well; road, gravel, double track, bike packing, singletrack and even the odd jump or pump track if it turns up on the route. A gravel bike lets you say yes when the pavement ends, the gravel narrows to singletrack or the sense of adventure pulls you further than you can tackle in just one day.
Since receiving my RaceMax2 in October, it has been my go-to gravel bike. I first raced it at Big Sugar to close out the LifeTime Grand Prix followed by Gravel Burn in South Africa. It has been with me as I got back into the swing of training and the various trips throughout the off-season as I prepare for the 2026 racing season.
For all the different things I have done on this bike, I have set it up different to match the task. I wanted to share these different setups to open your mind to the versatility of this bike, and gravel bikes generally, and hopefully inspire you to try something new on your bike.
The Fast-Packing RaceMax²
This is the setup I used for a bike-packing trip that fellow Canadian, Rob Britton, and I did in January. We flew from Barcelona to Alicante with our bikes in cardboard boxes and we rode from the Alicante Airport to Girona, Spain over 9 days. The route was just shy of 1500 km. We did 7 point-to-point days with fully loaded bikes and 2 loop-days where we pulled the bags off and pushed the distance and climbing.
I ran 55 mm deep road wheels from Easton paired with 40 mm slicks from Maxxis, the Velocita. (which is Italian for speed!) I decided to install the 2x drivetrain for this trip, which meant installing the Di2 battery, routing the Di2 wires, installing the front derailleur complete with the removable braze-on and swapping the rear derailleur, cassette, chain and installing the 50-34T chainrings on the crank. It was definitely not a small job, but I am 100% happy with my choice. With plenty of long, 30 min+ climbs, on loaded bikes, it made sense to take advantage of the benefits of a small front chainring and an optimized chain line in the easier gears. I also added the extra bottle cage to increase the water capacity. The bike performed beautifully for the whole trip, handling the load I put on through the Tailfin bags with ease and helping me chop off the km with speed and efficiency.
The only change I would have made with this setup is using the RaceMax² with the internal frame storage. This would have freed up a bit more space in my frame bag for more snacks, of course.
The Speed Gravel RaceMax²
This is the setup I used for racing the Gravel Burn stage race, Big Sugar and for training in Nova Scotia in November. I used the EC90 ALX wheels from Easton with a variety of different tire options from Maxxis in the 45-50 mm range. This is likely the most common way that the RaceMax2 gets setup in the real world. This is the sweet spot where you can keep going no matter where your route takes you. It also happens to be a fast setup for most gravel races in which I compete.* I ran a Shimano 1x drivetrain on this bike, combining a 10-51 cassette with a 48T or 50T chainring, depending on the severity of the climbs and the speed of the fastest pedalling sections.
*Side Note: For those considering doing Gravel Burn in the future, the Extrema Italia and big, comfortable MTB tires would likely have been the better choice. Words like champagne gravel were thrown around in the course intel I heard, and I prepared accordingly. For sure, the RaceMax² was not a bad choice, but once on the ground, experiencing the terrain, some plush 2.25s would have been appreciated.
The Off-Road Adventure RaceMax²
