The biggest race you've probably never heard of — unless you're a Midwesterner. Barry-Roubaix predates the word 'gravel' as a marketing category. It began in 2009, born out of a very Michigan problem: mountain bikers locked out of frozen, thawing singletrack in early spring who started riding the region's dirt and seasonal roads instead. What started as a few hundred riders at Gun Lake State Park has become, by most measures, one of the largest gravel races in the world by participation — over 4,000–5,600 riders depending on the year, rolling gravel, sand, two-track, and the occasional stretch of snow or ice through Barry County.
The event has stayed remarkably true to its low-key, community-first roots even at that scale: an after-party at Blackrocks Brewery (now title sponsor), a genuinely local volunteer base, and a race-day culture organizers and city officials alike describe as unusually good-natured for an event that shuts down a small city's streets to thousands of cyclists.
Weather is almost always the topic de jour at Barry Roubaix with April in Southwest Michigan being a notoriously unpredictable time of year. The race has been run in every kind of condition imaginable, and the course conditions usually dictate just how hard your race will be.
The 62-mile 'Killer' has been part of the event since the very first edition and functions as the race's traditional heart, even though the 100-mile 'Psycho-Killer' is now the headline distance for serious competitors — an unusual dynamic where the longest distance isn't automatically the founding or 'main' one.
The courses change slightly year over year, but are generally similar from one year to the next.
Opens November 15 at 9 a.m. ET on BikeReg for the following spring’s race. The event has sold out multiple recent editions (5,600+ registered for 2026) and does not offer race-day registration.